Tips For Successful Email Delivery

One of the most frequently asked questions is how to best send emails, so that they actually get delivered, and aren't blocked by the recipient's spam filter.  Here we give some tips on how to make sure your emails get delivered.  Following these tips will greatly improve your delivery rate, and ensure your business or organization is bulk emailing in a professional manner.

Make Sure Your Recipients Really Want Your Email
You should only be sending emails to recipients who have opted into your mailing list.  This can included customers who have purchased from you before, newsletter subscribers, organization members, or others who have explicitly requested to be on your mailing list.  There are many legitimate uses for sending bulk email.

If you bought a mailing list from a third party, this is not a legitimate use of AutoMSW.  See our no-spam policy.

Use A Valid "From" Email Address
The recipient should be able to reply to your email, and have it get delivered back to you.  Spam filters/software have a variety of methods to detect invalid or forged "From" addresses, and will often block your message based on this.

Have An Easy Opt-Out Method
If one of your recipients decides they no longer want to receive emails from you they should have an easy way to get off your mailing list.  This can be a link in your email that directs them to a form on your web site or immediately un-subscribes them.  You can also give other instructions for unsubscribing, like asking them to just email you back with "unsubscribe" in the subject.

Direct Send Specific Tips:
When using AutoMSW's "Direct Send" method (the built-in SMTP server), you should also have a static IP address with a rDNS entry as described below:

Send From A Mail Server With A Static IP Address
Some mail servers will reject your email if it comes from a mail server with a dynamic IP address.  Most home computers that connect to the internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) will often be given a dynamic IP address by their ISP.  It is called a dynamic IP because it could be different each time you connect.  If your computer is connected via a dynamic IP address you should avoid using AutoMSW's "Direct Send" feature.  Instead, use your ISP's SMTP server, which will have a static IP address.  To use your ISP's SMTP server choose the "Change..." button in the "From" section in AutoMSW, and choose the SMTP mail server option.  If you would like to obtain a static IP address, contact your ISP.  Many ISPs will offer a static IP for an additional monthly charge.

Send From A Mail Server With A Matching Reverse DNS (rDNS) Entry
Many mail servers will perform a reverse DNS lookup on the IP address of the mail server, and make sure it matches the domain name of that mail server.  If it does not match, the receiving mail server may refuse connection.  Anti-spam software may also do reverse DNS lookups before delivering your email to the recipient.

Reverse DNS is the process of taking an IP address and looking up the name associated with that IP address.  A properly configured mail server should have a reverse DNS entry that matches the domain name of the server.  A good site to learn about this, and do various lookups is Network-Tools.com or Lookup Server.  As an example, if your ISP was Earthlink, you could find out that the IP address of smtp.earthlink.net is 209.86.93.203 by doing a "Forward DNS Records Lookup" on the name smtp.earthlink.net, and look for the A record, which shows the IP address.  When this mail server delivers mail the receiving mail server would do a reverse DNS lookup on 209.86.93.203, and find that this IP address does indeed belong to earthlink.net, and therefore it would accept the email.  This process essentially verifies that the sending mail server actually is who it says it is.

If you have purchased a static IP address through your internet service provider you can usually ask them to set up a reverse DNS entry for your purchased static IP address.