Email Deliverability Issues

[MarkStrobel3367]

I use a bulk email program, SendBlaster, to deliver emails to school districts using direct mode and COX smtp server (my business high speed ISP) as my secondary mode of delivery. When emailing schools, some districts receive my emails using the direct mode but sometimes I get something like, ?unable to connect to smtp?, ?smtp rejected? or some error of that nature when I email to other school districts. Using the COX smtp server, I get reports that the email was delivered to those schools that reject the direct mode. However, I have been getting very few responses as the site that monitors my email deliveries, trackemailmarketing.com, reports that very few emails are read with no unsubscribers. I tend to believe that even the COX smtp server is having difficulty delivering to these school districts.

I have tried delivering html and text emails to these school districts with the same results. Before I emailing, I always run my emails through a system like Spam Assassin to make sure that my score is low.

It is my understanding that some school districts have very strict spam filters that eliminate spam as well as legitimate emails.

My questions are:

1) Would utilizing the services of a website specifically geared toward email delivery such as graphicmail.com be able to effectively send emails to the school districts that I cannot reach?
2) Would sending emails manually, one at a time without using a bulk email program, get my emails delivered? Is so, should I use html or text emails for best delivery? In addition, should I use Outlook or my aol account for best delivery?

Thanks.

 

[stubbs]

The answers are as follows!

1) Yes and No. It all depends on WHY your emails are being rejected. The benefits of using a bulk email service is that they usually are designed/benchmarked for large scale traffic. On the flip side, often times there IP addresses are blacklisted. Every mail server has its own level of spam parameters. Typically, most servers want to know that the mail was sent via a SMTP authenticated account from a non-blacklisted account, with relevant headers.

The best way to determine your next move is to examine the headers/bodies of the bounced back emails. They will often be clues as to WHY your mail may be undeliverable.

2) Not always. It goes back to the same issue. It all depends on WHERE the mail is originating, the headers of the messages, etc. If you are sending the mail via Gmail (for example) or via their SMTP servers then you will most likely have a higher success rate due to their messages being authenticated, their smtp server trusted, the messages secure, etc.

I hope this helps!