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Thanks! I totally agree - you need to be extraordinary carefully not to land on blacklists. Nevertheless we think it's doable and give it a try. We try hard to

Thanks! I totally agree - you need to be extraordinary carefully not to land on blacklists. Nevertheless we think it's doable and give it a try. We try hard to follow best practices and have implemented basics such as using a dedicated IP, SPF entries, reverse DNS and basic policies like only emailing user that explicitly opted in. Any suggestions for additional precautions are strongly appreciated :) PS: Thanks for the double opt-in hint, it's on the todo list!

jonknee 16y ago
Well you're not double opting in at the moment, which is pretty much the first rule of email marketing. You should be doing DKIM signing as well. And sign up for all the feedback loops you can. As for the daily grind, you need to pay attention to every single bounced message. They bounce for different reasons and depending on the reason you need to do different things. Make a mistake and you get blacklisted. Even better, the error codes vary depending on the server software so it's not easy to automate. There's a lot more to it, but as I said I wouldn't attempt to do it myself.
- JacobAldridge 16y ago
  FWIW I saw the Lonely Planet (travel site) online manager speak at an email marketing conference last year, and he said the best thing they had done (in terms of database growth) was go to single opt-in. Needless to say he got frowns from the 'best practice' people in the room, including the conference sponsors, but I'd say it's a rule not the first rule.
trustfundbaby 16y ago
I guess I just don't understand why you would roll your own. What advantages do you hope to gain in the short run when you have no idea if you'll be around for the long run? Don't let the excitement of the moment overwhelm you. Building your own email sending system (implementing policies to avoid being black listed etc) complete with analytics is a non-trivial endeavor. 9.9 times out of 10 the smart move is to go with a free mailchimp plan THEN try to roll your own when it gets too expensive. be smart.
- deleted 16y ago
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- metachris 16y ago
  You guys are so right - your feedback made me reconsider the current approach and choose to go with MailChimp. Often it's so easy to get intrigued by an idea with interesting code to write ;)

jonknee 16y ago

Well you're not double opting in at the moment, which is pretty much the first rule of email marketing. You should be doing DKIM signing as well. And sign up for all the feedback loops you can. As for the daily grind, you need to pay attention to every single bounced message. They bounce for different reasons and depending on the reason you need to do different things. Make a mistake and you get blacklisted. Even better, the error codes vary depending on the server software so it's not easy to automate. There's a lot more to it, but as I said I wouldn't attempt to do it myself.

JacobAldridge 16y ago
FWIW I saw the Lonely Planet (travel site) online manager speak at an email marketing conference last year, and he said the best thing they had done (in terms of database growth) was go to single opt-in. Needless to say he got frowns from the 'best practice' people in the room, including the conference sponsors, but I'd say it's a rule not the first rule.

trustfundbaby 16y ago

I guess I just don't understand why you would roll your own. What advantages do you hope to gain in the short run when you have no idea if you'll be around for the long run? Don't let the excitement of the moment overwhelm you. Building your own email sending system (implementing policies to avoid being black listed etc) complete with analytics is a non-trivial endeavor. 9.9 times out of 10 the smart move is to go with a free mailchimp plan THEN try to roll your own when it gets too expensive. be smart.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
metachris 16y ago
You guys are so right - your feedback made me reconsider the current approach and choose to go with MailChimp. Often it's so easy to get intrigued by an idea with interesting code to write ;)