[WebPub] best practice for html email announcements

[Cecilia M Marra]

Hi Julie,

My apologies for my delayed response, but your message was only just brought to my attention.  Your email being flagged as spam may have nothing to do with how you've formatted your message or whether you've included an image.  If you are using FileMaker to generate email messages that go out through FileMaker's recently added bulk smtp feature, you are likely sending the messages out as an unauthenticated user through the mail server outgoing.mit.edu.  I believe that this may increase the likelihood that the receiving ISP mail servers will perceive the message as spam and will act accordingly.  If you are sending these messages to many recipients, the likelihood increases even further.

If you are sending to a mailing list, using Mailman instead of FileMaker with outgoing.mit.edu will reduce your risk of having your message flagged as spam. 

Hope that helps a little!
Cecilia


---------------------------------------------------------------
Cecilia Marra
Web and Database Consultant
Departmental Consulting and Application Development (DCAD) 
Information Services and Technology 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
cmarra at mit.edu 

----------------------------------------------------------------
Important: MIT IT staff will *NEVER* send you email requesting your password information. 
Please ignore any email messages that claim to require you to provide such information.


-----Original Message-----
From: webpub-bounces at MIT.EDU [mailto:webpub-bounces at MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of Julie Ellen Pryor
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 12:13 PM
To: webpub at mit.edu
Subject: [WebPub] best practice for html email announcements

Hi all -

We occasionally send out html-based email announcements to large groups of people via our filemaker database. I have since learned that some of these people are not receiving our email announcements because their email programs are interpreting our announcements as spam. Our emails are fairly basic in nature but they do typically include an image. I have no way of knowing how many people are receiving our emails or not (although I think most are getting them) but I'm wondering if there is anything we should be doing to *decrease* the chances of our emails being tossed into the dreaded spam folder... 

What is best practice for html-based email announcements? SHould we avoid the use of images, for example?

Thanks for any insight you can provide!
________
Julie Pryor
Communications Administrator
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
MIT Bldg 46-3160
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

e: jpryor at mit.edu
t: 617.715.5397
f: 617.452.4119
w: http://mcgovern.mit.edu

McGovern Institute for Brain Research: Understanding the Brain in Health and Disease












_______________________________________________
WebPub mailing list
WebPub at mit.edu
https://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/webpub