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Author Topic: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam  (Read 3228 times)

mac

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CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 16, 2010, 02:28:00 pm
Hi,

We are looking into sending big amounts of email through our CiviCRM installation and we are quite concerned about not getting blacklisted due to spam restrictions.

I looked around a bit in the forum, and I found these two topics:
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,9995.0.html
http://forum.civicrm.org/?topic=908

Is CiviSMTP the way to go? Can somebody recommend other alternatives? How are you guys solving the problem?

Thanx.

Donald Lobo

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 17, 2010, 11:42:19 am

any smtp server offering can be used to send outbound email.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=RfV&q=SMTP+services&aq=f&aqi=&oq=

u'll still need to deal with inbound email (which CiviSMTP takes care of)

lobo
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mac

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 17, 2010, 12:47:06 pm
Lobo, thank you for the feedback.

Can anybody recommend specific services (I understand if official CiviCRM support/moderators don't want to get involved in this)? Since CiviSMTP is offering also inbound email handling, why wouldn't I go with it?

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 17, 2010, 01:26:48 pm
So, CiviSMTP is a paid service to do CiviMail for you. Alternatively you can set CiviMail up on your own server and send the mails from there. I don't think there is much difference from a SPAM point of view but your own server may not have the resources to send CiviMail or you may prefer to use the technical skills of the CiviSMTP people rather than worry about implementing / maintaining it yourself.

CiviMail requires certain things to reduce the chance of it being seen as spam such as organisation name & address & unsubscribe & opt-out links. This is independent of the way in which you send it.
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mac

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 17, 2010, 01:31:40 pm
Yup, we currently have CiviMail running through our own mail server and recently we had some orange lights in terms of warnings for spam / blacklisting.

We do not send a lot of emails systematically, but if we send stuff, it could be ~5k in one go. Which is really not a lot, but it already brings us on the spam radar.

If you would compare services like MailChimp vs. CiviSMTP, how would see the pro & cons (beside the incoming email option from CiviSMTP)?

mac

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 19, 2010, 08:17:18 am
An additional question: We are currently using the CiviMail processor. When people reply to the newsletter, CiviCRM keeps track of who replied to the email, but I can't see the content of the email anywhere, is that right?

Is CiviSMTP offering the possibility to actually see within CiviCRM what a given person actually replied?

Other then the easy of setup etc., where would you see the advantages of using CiviSMTP vs. the CiviMail processor?

Piotr Szotkowski

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 19, 2010, 08:49:30 am
Quote from: mac on February 19, 2010, 08:17:18 am
An additional question: We are currently using the CiviMail processor. When people reply to the newsletter, CiviCRM keeps track of who replied to the email, but I can't see the content of the email anywhere, is that right?

Right (if you mean the CiviCRM UI), unless the reply eventually goes to you (in which case you should see it in your email client).

Quote
Is CiviSMTP offering the possibility to actually see within CiviCRM what a given person actually replied?

I highly doubt it.

Quote
Other then the easy of setup etc., where would you see the advantages of using CiviSMTP vs. the CiviMail processor?

Less headaches in general and them taking care of you not being blacklisted as a spam source by someone sometime down the line.
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mac

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 19, 2010, 08:54:11 am
Thanks for the feedback.

Quote from: Piotr Szotkowski on February 19, 2010, 08:49:30 am
Right (if you mean the CiviCRM UI), unless the reply eventually goes to you (in which case you should see it in your email client).
right. Have you guys considered implementing the feature of making the reply content visible in the UI? Especially if you work in a (bigger) group, it would be really nice to see for everybody what the given person answered through the UI.

Quote from: Piotr Szotkowski on February 19, 2010, 08:49:30 am
Less headaches in general and them taking care of you not being blacklisted as a spam source by someone sometime down the line.
The blacklisting protection may be actually worth paying for it ...

Donald Lobo

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 19, 2010, 10:24:37 am
Quote from: mac on February 19, 2010, 08:54:11 am
right. Have you guys considered implementing the feature of making the reply content visible in the UI? Especially if you work in a (bigger) group, it would be really nice to see for everybody what the given person answered through the UI.

not yet, but if your org/group is willing to work on it / sponsor it, that would be great and help quite a few other organizations also

lobo
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mac

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 19, 2010, 10:28:04 am
Quote from: Donald Lobo on February 19, 2010, 10:24:37 am
not yet, but if your org/group is willing to work on it / sponsor it, that would be great and help quite a few other organizations also
Although it sounds interesting to look into it, I/we unfortunately don't have the resources needed to be put into this. We are a start-up with 5 people incl. 1 web developer = me.  :(

ken

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Re: CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam
February 28, 2010, 03:04:41 am
Some web resources I've found helpful ...

http://www.maawg.org/sites/maawg/files/news/MAAWG_Senders_BCP_Ver2.pdf
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81126
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/basics/postmaster-02.html
http://www.dnsbl.info/dnsbl-database-check.php
http://www.spam.org/info/Spam_Best_Practices.htm

Some advice ...
* set up an SPF record on your DNS
* use DKIM signing to authnticate messages are from you
* don't use a separate email server to the one that you use for general emails (when I did, we got marked as a spammer by Message Labs because of the asymmetry of the traffic ... many emails sent and few (except bounces) received).

Ken
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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
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  • Support »
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  • CiviMail: Newsletters (mass mailings) & spam

This forum was archived on 2017-11-26.