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How do I prevent sent emails becomming spam?

 
Sheriff
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A family member of mine is a Dentist. Her practice used to send out emails to patients reminding them of appointments but they have now stopped because it became apparent that most patients were not seeing the reminders because the email got filtered off into their spam bin.

Unfortunately I don't know the specifics of what email provider they use, or what the email looks like, so I'm in real danger of failing our own TellTheDetails directive, but are there any general tips, do's, and don'ts that may help them avoid spam filters?

Thanks
Tim
 
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I am by no means an expert, but...

have him ask his patients to white-list the account. Most providers let you say "i know mail from this place looks like SPAM, but I really do want it".

Make sure the email has all the proper headers. I wrote some perl scripts that generated email alerts, and if I didn't populate enough of the fields (sent date, subject, from address, etc), my own company's spam filter would kill it.

I think the body must have text in it. i.e. not just the date/time of the appointment in the subject, but real words.

Even after doing all this, it is something that I don't think she would have a lot of control over.

Part of the difficulty is that the spam could be caught by her provider going out, or by the recipients provider as it comes in...
 
Tim Cooke
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Thanks Fred, I think I'll have to take a closer look at the setup they've got in the practice to see if any of your suggestions apply. Although it depends on how bothered they are about sorting it out whether they'd want me doing anything at all.

I'll come back if I get something. But I might not.
 
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Hi Tim,

I have some experience in this field from helping WordPress bloggers.

Client Stuff
MailChimp has some good ideas that should help, but in general:
  • Make sure the subject line isn't too generic and spammy. "Your appointment" has a higher chance of being flagged than "Appointment Reminder from XYZ Dental Clinic"
  • As Fred mentioned, make sure the body contains legitimate, personalized information. Include the address of the business, time and date of the appointment, etc... "Dear Tim," is better than "Dear Patient,"
  • Make sure there is an "unsubscribe link". That's required by CAN-SPAM in the USA and the EU Privacy Laws in Europe. Without it, newsletter like emails seem to have a higher chance of being flagged.

  • Host Stuff
    Check the Spamhaus Block List and make sure there is not a problem with the IP.
  • On shared hosting platforms, I've seen sites get labeled as spammers via "guilt by association" when the same server also hosts a spammer. If that's a problem, Spamhaus provides instructions to get removed, and also talk to the host about moving to a different server
  • If they use WordPress with a self-hosted automated event driven/calendar reminder system, make sure WordPress is sending emails from an legitimate address. WordPress defaults to "wordpress@<your_domain>" or "<your_account>@<server_box>.<server_host>". If that's part of the problem, PM me and I'll give you the code required to fix that in their wp-config.php file.

  • Good luck!
     
    Tim Cooke
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    That's some great info Chris, thanks.
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