CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm looking for suggestions on improving e-mail deliverability from CiviMail.  We use CiviMail for two purposes:

1) Announcements/newsletter.  These typically go to our entire contact database (minus opt-outs) for things like announcing our new season, show opening announcement, etc.

2) Reservation reminders.  These go to our ~200 season subscribers reminding them to pick a performance date/time for an upcoming show.

I consistently have patrons reporting that they did not receive the reminder e-mail.  Occasionally they are irate because the show has already closed by the time they realize they've forgotten to make a reservation.  Patrons reporting this problem almost always have e-mail addresses at yahoo, hotmail or gmail.

Presumably the delivery rate for #1 above is also less than ideal, but there's no feedback loop of complaints when those don't get delivered.

I have already implemented Domainkeys/DKIM, and we're using a 3rd party SMTP service (Critsend).  I've also tried SocketLabs and CiviSMTP with no improvement.

I don't think there is any problem with CiviMail per se -- the CiviMail delivery reports show expected numbers.  I suspect that the e-mail providers are choosing not to deliver our mail to some users.  Typically that happens due to content or sender reputation, but I can't see how either of those decision criteria would be negatively affecting us here.

Anyone else run into this issue?  I've spent many hours on this, and I'm close to giving up on CiviMail and trying out the Constant Contact integration module.