3 ms·

Ask HN: How do I stop my form emails from ending up in spam?

5 points by lquist 13y ago

My startup uses SendGrid, and about 20% of our form emails end up in spam. This number has been getting higher lately, and is worryingly high. Any way to counteract this?

orangethirty 13y ago
What have you tested?
twunde 13y ago
There is no silver bullet for this, but there are ways to mitigate the effect. However always remember that email spam rates are a way of saying that the email is not interesting enough If a user marks you as spam, unsubscribe them from the email. Make sure your content is interesting enough for readers to actually read it and possibly respond. If it is not, you may want to spend some time rewriting it and adjusting the copywriting You may want to adjust the times you send out the information. If you're sending email in response to signups you may want to send it around half an hour after signup. Try to time it for when users will actually read it (so usually non-Monday or Friday weekdays) Always make sure to have a one-click unsubscribe button in a fairly obvious location. If a user wants to unsubscribe they are likely to hit spam if they can't find the unsubscribe link. You can give users whitelist instructions, although frankly I don't know how effective this is.
- twunde 13y ago
  And one of the better resources is by the 37 signals team: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3096-giving-away-the-secrets-of-993-email-delivery http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3096-giving-away-the-secrets-... Your email going to spam is a very difficult problem to solve unfortunately. Most companies will use warmed-up ip addresses, as cold ip addresses can easily end up with a bad reputation and be sent to spam. I've also known companies to unsubscribe users who haven't read an email for a few weeks (at least 3-7 unread emails).
ToniVlaic 13y ago
I had a similar problem and setting up a valid reverse DNS records for all servers, the SPF record and DKIM solved the problem. Also for Hotmail you should check out this: https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts&scrx=1 https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&...

5 points by lquist 13y ago

My startup uses SendGrid, and about 20% of our form emails end up in spam. This number has been getting higher lately, and is worryingly high. Any way to counteract this?

orangethirty 13y ago

What have you tested?

twunde 13y ago

There is no silver bullet for this, but there are ways to mitigate the effect. However always remember that email spam rates are a way of saying that the email is not interesting enough If a user marks you as spam, unsubscribe them from the email. Make sure your content is interesting enough for readers to actually read it and possibly respond. If it is not, you may want to spend some time rewriting it and adjusting the copywriting You may want to adjust the times you send out the information. If you're sending email in response to signups you may want to send it around half an hour after signup. Try to time it for when users will actually read it (so usually non-Monday or Friday weekdays) Always make sure to have a one-click unsubscribe button in a fairly obvious location. If a user wants to unsubscribe they are likely to hit spam if they can't find the unsubscribe link. You can give users whitelist instructions, although frankly I don't know how effective this is.

twunde 13y ago
And one of the better resources is by the 37 signals team: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3096-giving-away-the-secrets-of-993-email-delivery http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3096-giving-away-the-secrets-... Your email going to spam is a very difficult problem to solve unfortunately. Most companies will use warmed-up ip addresses, as cold ip addresses can easily end up with a bad reputation and be sent to spam. I've also known companies to unsubscribe users who haven't read an email for a few weeks (at least 3-7 unread emails).

ToniVlaic 13y ago

I had a similar problem and setting up a valid reverse DNS records for all servers, the SPF record and DKIM solved the problem. Also for Hotmail you should check out this: https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts&scrx=1 https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&...