Legit 3rd-party email services for huge lists?

(If there is a better newsgroup for this, please let me know.)
Hi.
We're looking for some kind of legitimate 3rd party email service that
we can use to email announcements and notices to our thousands of
wholesalers and customers, without constantly triggering spam
blacklists like Yahoo and AOL mail.

See, we have wholesalers of our product and they have customers, who
we have to send emails to on a regular basis. From order and shipping
confirmations to notices of changes in the online account manager,
etc. Every time we send these out, we get our IP blacklisted by AOL
and Yahoo and others for sending spam--even though these are legit
emails to our customers! We never send emails out to people who are
not active wholesalers or their customers who have actually bought
product from us.

But we get emails all the time from legit companies like Yahoo
Greeting Cards and other non-spam companies, surely they must be able
to do it without constantly getting blacklisted.
Is there something out there that can help us?

If we can at least be able to send emails out to our couple thousand
wholesalers, that'd be OK. If there was something that would allow us
to email their customers in the name of our wholesalers, that'd be
great! (Not spoof any important header info: the reply email can all
be the same, but the FROM part would be great if it was able to have
the name of the company they bought from.)
Make sense?
Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Re: Legit 3rd-party email services for huge lists?

On 11/06/07 14:18, Liam wrote:
> (If there is a better newsgroup for this, please let me know.)

This is a news group for the (Unix) Sendmail (Mail Transfer Agent)
program not general email sending questions.

> We're looking for some kind of legitimate 3rd party email service
> that we can use to email announcements and notices to our thousands
> of wholesalers and customers, without constantly triggering spam
> blacklists like Yahoo and AOL mail.

I'll skip the usual diatribe about whether this purported email really
is valid or not. (I'm sure that someone else will cover this for me.)

Here are just a few things to do to help get your message(s) out:
- First and foremost (sub)divide your mailing list in to multiple
smaller lists.
- Use some other common mailing list options when sending your
message(s) to automatically manage your list(s) subscribers.
- Subscribe to things like AOL's "Feedback Loop Service" and any
others like it.
- Regularly purge your mailing list(s) subscriber(s).
- Require "Double Opt In" setups for end users.
- Educate mandatory subscribers (wholesalers) as to the fact that they
are mandatory.

> See, we have wholesalers of our product and they have customers, who
> we have to send emails to on a regular basis. From order and shipping
> confirmations to notices of changes in the online account manager,
> etc. Every time we send these out, we get our IP blacklisted by AOL
> and Yahoo and others for sending spam--even though these are legit
> emails to our customers! We never send emails out to people who are
> not active wholesalers or their customers who have actually bought
> product from us.

You have a unique position with your wholesalers compared to the rest of
the world. As far as your wholesalers customers, you need to be a bit
more careful.

It may be worth your time to drop a line to postmasters with some of
your more common black listers and enlist their help in finding out what
/ how they would like to see emails from you to their portion of your
subscriber base. Be pro-active in resolving issues before they become
issues.

> But we get emails all the time from legit companies like Yahoo
> Greeting Cards and other non-spam companies, surely they must be able
> to do it without constantly getting blacklisted. Is there something
> out there that can help us?

Yahoo, greeting card companies, and the likes have MANY MANY MANY IP
addresses they can use to send their massive amounts of messages. In
fact it may be worth obtaining some more IP addresses to send the
messages that you are wanting to send. Use one or more IP addresses
just for communications to your wholesalers and one or more different IP
addresses just for your customers. I'd even suggest that these IP
addresses be just for sending these messages.

> If we can at least be able to send emails out to our couple thousand
> wholesalers, that'd be OK. If there was something that would allow us
> to email their customers in the name of our wholesalers, that'd be
> great! (Not spoof any important header info: the reply email can all
> be the same, but the FROM part would be great if it was able to have
> the name of the company they bought from.)

I think you have some what of a leg to stand on as far as your
wholesalers go but customers is an entirely different ball game.

The messages that you send out need to be as clean as possible, make
them short and as direct to the point. Do *NOT* try to imitate your
wholesalers. Rather send the messages out as your self or a division of
your self that is specifically meant for each wholesaler. Possibly
something like ... Do not do any thing that
would trigger any SPF filters (or the likes).

I'd suggest that you use as full personalization as possible. (In my
experience) sending multiple discreet messages is more likely to get
through than fewer messages to multiple recipients.

Look in to using other various mailing list management features.

> Make sense?

Yes.

> Any suggestions?

See inline above, ask more questions, or drop me a line off list for
some other options.

> Thanks!



Grant. . . .

Re: Legit 3rd-party email services for huge lists?

On 11/06/07 14:18, Liam wrote:
> (If there is a better newsgroup for this, please let me know.)

As Moe Trin pointed out in another post:

comp.mail.list-admin.policy Policy issues in running mailing lists.
comp.mail.list-admin.software Software used in the running of mailing
lists.

These might be a good place to look.



Grant. . . .

Re: Legit 3rd-party email services for huge lists?

On Nov 6, 3:41 pm, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 11/06/07 14:18, Liam wrote:
>
> > (If there is a better newsgroup for this, please let me know.)
>
> This is a news group for the (Unix) Sendmail (Mail Transfer Agent)
> program not general email sending questions.
>
> > We're looking for some kind of legitimate 3rd party email service
> > that we can use to email announcements and notices to our thousands
> > of wholesalers and customers, without constantly triggering spam
> > blacklists like Yahoo and AOL mail.
>
> I'll skip the usual diatribe about whether this purported email really
> is valid or not. (I'm sure that someone else will cover this for me.)
>
[..snip..]
Thanks for the reply!
We already do some of the stuff, like opt-in and educating on
mandatory. I've subscribed to AOL's list, but they still reject some
of our order confirmation emails and the like now and then.
But you have some other suggestions I hadn't really considered!

We may just end up using a couple of different IP's for various uses.
A new one for the very important wholesaler announcements, one for not
as important things, one for important customer mailings (like
shipping and order info and customer service communications) and one
for specials and coupons, etc.

So, hmm, multiple IP addresses... can we set up one server to have
more than one??
Don't think so.
We'd have to have a box with sendmail on each IP, wouldn't we?
Well, thanks for the reply and info!!
-Liam

Re: Legit 3rd-party email services for huge lists?

On 11/06/07 16:27, Liam wrote:
> Thanks for the reply!

*nod*

> We already do some of the stuff, like opt-in and educating on
> mandatory. I've subscribed to AOL's list, but they still reject some
> of our order confirmation emails and the like now and then. But you
> have some other suggestions I hadn't really considered!

Hopefully they will help.

You may also want to consider using a separate sub-domain for the
various types of communications. This way if the sub-domain gets black
listed hopefully it will not effect the rest of your communications.

> We may just end up using a couple of different IP's for various uses.
> A new one for the very important wholesaler announcements, one for
> not as important things, one for important customer mailings (like
> shipping and order info and customer service communications) and one
> for specials and coupons, etc.
>
> So, hmm, multiple IP addresses... can we set up one server to have
> more than one??

Yes.

> Don't think so.

You can tell Sendmail what IP addresses and / or ports to bind to. I
believe you can also use different names per IP / port too.

With the proper ClientPortOption, you can configure Sendmail to send
email out the same interface that the message came in on. So if a
message comes in to the daemon on the wholesaler IP / port the message
will leave out the wholesaler IP / port too. One tricky thing with this
option is that message HAVE to go out the same interface that hey came
in on. I think this is only applied to ports that have this
ClientPortOption turned though.

Worst case is you will run one daemon to route all messages to the
appropriate back end daemon IP / port. Then these back end daemons will
send the messages to clients. This way you can be sure that any
messages that come in via localhost will not be trapped.

> We'd have to have a box with sendmail on each IP, wouldn't we? Well,
> thanks for the reply and info!!

Yes an instance of Sendmail will be listening on the IPs, but it could
be the same instance of Sendmail configured to intelligently handle things.

Give this some serious reading and see if this will help you.



Grant. . . .

Re: Legit 3rd-party email services for huge lists?

Liam wrote:

> (If there is a better newsgroup for this, please let me know.)
> Hi.
> We're looking for some kind of legitimate 3rd party email service that
> we can use to email announcements and notices to our thousands of
> wholesalers and customers,





amoung others.

Jeff

Re: Legit 3rd-party email services for huge lists?

Liam wrote:

> (If there is a better newsgroup for this, please let me know.)
> Hi.
> We're looking for some kind of legitimate 3rd party email service that
> we can use to email announcements and notices to our thousands of
> wholesalers and customers,





amoung others.

Jeff