Here is a question I am researching. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated...

I'm mostly interested in what you can find out about the things mail servers look for in determining if an email might be spam and then decides to either not deliver it or dump it in a bulk mail folder.

For example here are a couple of things we know:

1) Many mail servers will block all email that comes from a mail server that has an IP on a list supplied by spews.org.

2) Hotmail will put a delivered email in the Bulk Mail folder if the TO address in the header (which has nothing to do with were it is delivered) is not a valid email address.

3) Outlook has default rules for their junk mail filter that will put a
delivered email into a bulk mail folder if the FROM address is
sales@anything.com.

4) AOL will deny access to its mail servers if another mail server tries to send too many emails to it within a certain period of time.

There are probably dozens of other known things the major mail systems like AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Outlook do filter out junk mail. Our problem is that we want to get around them so that we can get our customers notified of our product upgrades.

More ISPs seem to be adding a filter that perceives any email coming in using the Bcc feature as Spam or bulk mail. Some of those filters delete the email before it reaches the recipient.

My newsletter goes out using the Bcc feature so the members can not see the other members email addresses. Since that is used, some ISPs assume it's Spam.

My mailing program has two main sending options: bulk and individual.

For the majority, I can use the bulk feature which uses the Bcc feature and can send out about 600 html newsletters in less than 2 minutes.

For the few that can't receive my newsletter that way, I use the individual feature. It takes a lot longer time to send this way. Approximately 10 html newsletters in less than 30 seconds.

Dave

Chief you got some points of it down. anything with keywords such as 'sales, XXX' and so on will be put into the junk mail folder.

recently i sent this girl an email with the subject 'i love you' (it was a joke) well, this email was put in the junk mail folder.
i believe its because of the i love you virus thing.

remember though, different people have different settings of junk mail filtering. if your on their address book then it will not go in junk folder.

on low setting, most things get by, you can just hope for that

on medium setting, its hard but ive gotten through it before. something like putting your name in the subject field or putting something like 'Information concerning you' that might work.

there is also various fields depending on the junk mail. what email you use (doesnt matter much), subject field...

i pretty much think its a luck thing, either you get lucky for sending the right message or your not lucky and it gets sent to the junk mail folder. now, you have to hope for the person to check the junk mail folder then...

there are some suggestion. i hope that helps

CAPITAL

CAPITAL letters in the subject bar can result in the email being sent to hotmails junk folder..... it usually belongs there though lol

If you guys are looking for a free web based service to check your email for spam rules. go to

http://ezinecheck.com/check.html

paste your newsletter copy into the box and Rate It!

Interesting tool. Thanks fworx!