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Often I try to help sites with more generic, borked issues. Your comment about "Oh boy, will they tell you" brought one to the fore. I sent the following to a

Often I try to help sites with more generic, borked issues. Your comment about "Oh boy, will they tell you" brought one to the fore. I sent the following to a site. Do you think I received a response? A reply? Either they don't actually read emails from customers, or they employ a person which became 'confused', and their eyes glazed over, once they failed to understand the message. (Note that I sent to about 5 email addresses. The one sent after I purchased the pillow, a website info, whois email addresses, and even took 2 minutes to find the CEO email address. Yup. No response from any of them. And more than 18 months later (I just checked), the SPF record remains unchanged.) I wonder. While metrics may be helpful, I wonder how many only pay attention to metrics, and then ignore emails such as mine. -- Hello, I'm terribly sorry, but unfortunately you've sold a pillow to a SysAdmin. And now that you've done something wrong "with computers", I'm going to prattle on whilst your eyes glaze over. :P But in all seriousness, I recently ordered a pillow from you. Yet your confirmation email bounced! Here's why: May 13 07:10:54 XXX postfix/smtpd[32163]: NOQUEUE: milter-reject: RCPT from smtp2.shopify.com[104.198.207.207]: 551 5.7.1 SPF verification failure: sender host 'smtp2.shopify.com'[104.198.207.207] not among explicitly allowed origin hosts for domain 'canadiandownandfeather.com', and misses are forbidden; REJECT; from=<info@canadiandownandfeather.com> to=<xxx> proto=ESMTP helo=<smtp2.shopify.com> What's happening, is your SPF record does not list Shopify email servers, as valid for your domain name canadiandownandfeather.com... You do have outlook.com there: canadiandownandfeather.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" But not Shopify. If fact, the "-all" part at the end means "and nothing else can send mail!". So, as you are telling people that outlook is the only acceptable place to send mail from? Until you fix this: - some mail server servers, like mine, will completely reject your mail from shopify's platform - almost all remaining mail servers, will place this type of mail in SPAM folders I must stress, that due to your 'outlook' line, normal email should work perfectly fine. We're only talking about email, using your domain, but from shopify's platform. If you go here: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/setup-business-settings#customer-email-best-practices https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-... And search for "SPF record", you'll see this: -- To verify your customer email address, you need to add Shopify's SPF record — v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com ~all — to the TXT record in your custom domain settings. -- Now.. you want to KEEP your outlook domain too. So, just add "include:shops.shopify.com" to your TXT record, so both are there.. something like this: "v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" Do this, and your problem should be fixed. You can go here: https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3acanadiandownandfeather.com&run=toolpage https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3acanadiando... And check if things are done correctly. --

lsaferite 6y ago
I think the humour at the start might have been enough to make many people not read the email TBH. Something a little less tongue-in-cheek and simply nice/approachable is likely to net a better chance of response.
- def8cefe 6y ago
  Yeah that first paragraph would have been better spent giving an overview of the information that was laid out after. 'I have found a problem. The problem has this negative impact. Brief description of problem.' Be serious if you want to be taken seriously, especially in your initial communication with an unknown third-party.
- angus-prune 6y ago
  Hard agree. You don't describe the business problem, but go into incredible detail about technical details that either nobody reading the email[1] cares about. Even more than that - you're basically asking them to run random bash commands from the internet. They shouldn't trust your advice, anything you say would have to be verified by their own team, so the level of technical info is useless to them. In fact, including all the technobabble mnakes it look even more like a scam. Remember, not that long ago it was a common scam to ask employees to make changes to the phone system, which would give the scammer free international calls. Your email is idenitical[2] to one of those scams. A better email would be (and this isn't perfect): "Hello, I am a recent customer of yours and noticed that all your confirmation emails aren't being sent properly and won't be delivered at all for most users. I'm a sysadmin, so had a look at the the problem using public data, and it looks like your tech team overlooked a setting when they set up your email system. Its a easy mistake to make and would take them 5 minutes to fix. The technical details are that there is an "SPF" record which says who is allowed to send emails as your company - this is correctly set up for your office emails through outlook, but not set up for the automated emails from shopify. If you let your tech team know that shopify is missing from the SPF records, and they'll quickly see the issue and fix it within minutes. If you would like more information about the issue, I'd be happy to advise further[3]" [1] The people who do care won't see your email. [2] To the untrained user. [3] I mean, I wouldn't, but you seem like you would ;)

lsaferite 6y ago

I think the humour at the start might have been enough to make many people not read the email TBH. Something a little less tongue-in-cheek and simply nice/approachable is likely to net a better chance of response.

def8cefe 6y ago
Yeah that first paragraph would have been better spent giving an overview of the information that was laid out after. 'I have found a problem. The problem has this negative impact. Brief description of problem.' Be serious if you want to be taken seriously, especially in your initial communication with an unknown third-party.
angus-prune 6y ago
Hard agree. You don't describe the business problem, but go into incredible detail about technical details that either nobody reading the email[1] cares about. Even more than that - you're basically asking them to run random bash commands from the internet. They shouldn't trust your advice, anything you say would have to be verified by their own team, so the level of technical info is useless to them. In fact, including all the technobabble mnakes it look even more like a scam. Remember, not that long ago it was a common scam to ask employees to make changes to the phone system, which would give the scammer free international calls. Your email is idenitical[2] to one of those scams. A better email would be (and this isn't perfect): "Hello, I am a recent customer of yours and noticed that all your confirmation emails aren't being sent properly and won't be delivered at all for most users. I'm a sysadmin, so had a look at the the problem using public data, and it looks like your tech team overlooked a setting when they set up your email system. Its a easy mistake to make and would take them 5 minutes to fix. The technical details are that there is an "SPF" record which says who is allowed to send emails as your company - this is correctly set up for your office emails through outlook, but not set up for the automated emails from shopify. If you let your tech team know that shopify is missing from the SPF records, and they'll quickly see the issue and fix it within minutes. If you would like more information about the issue, I'd be happy to advise further[3]" [1] The people who do care won't see your email. [2] To the untrained user. [3] I mean, I wouldn't, but you seem like you would ;)