Opt-in Newsletters: Avoiding the Spam Filters...
 

Say I have a daily / weekly (user specified) opt-in email newsletter for an adult service, an HTML based newsletter. I tested it and sure enough in my outlook express, it was sent directly to the spam folder.

How can I avoid this ASIDE from the obvious, which is modifying the content of the email to avoid the spam folder?

I assume outlook express is the most popular email client, I was wondering if there was a link or something that I could put on the opt-in form that would automatically flag emails coming from my newsletter as being legit? but, probably not...

I'm thinking the only way I will be able to combat this is by automatically emailing them a "Welcome" email and telling them to manually flag a particular email address as being legit, which sucks.

hehe, I can't imagine that being abused by spammers.

I use bighip.com for that but you cant import your old mails. You have to star collecting through them. Its a bitch but its the only way to mail opt in and get past the filters as far as i know.

well, it'd be a link that the user has to click. and it would bring up a window first by the email client with an "OK" button... in outlook express, there is a "Not Junk" button and when you click it and have an email selected, it brings up a dialogue box.

is it possible to have the emails automated and fully dynamic in php?

The emails automated? What you mean with that?

What I'm planning on doing is setting up a CRON script, which basically runs a specified php script every 24 hours - and it will automatically send out the newsletter to the subscribers without me having to manually send it out every day.

Oh, i dont think so but im not sure.
Maybe you can shedule mailings.

www.bighip.com

Sign up and see for yourself..its free to sign up.

I just checked, you can shedule but it doesnt look like you can shedule a daily mailing.

We deal with this problem daily when mass mailing to opt/out lists. AOL MSN / Hotmail seem to block most of our shit - but we manage around a 35 percent hit ratio by screwing with our html templates. Stripping them of anything adult. We also have notes to the user saying "check your spam settings or you wont get to see a bunny spanked" blah blah - kind of works.
Thing is I would drop my mail shots if they didnt work but we always get good conversions on joins with each mail shot so Its money for nothing really :thumbsup

you need to get off the rbl.

If you send newsletters to any mail system that has "report this as spam" buttons on their mail programs, then you are doomed. If your mailer is not 100% good at catching bounces the first time, you are doomed.

Enough people report you, or enough mail bounces, and you get red flagged, your done.

Alex

here's a start

http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_0_x.html