Ham list

[Eric Shubert]

Trent Shipley wrote:
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> I have a friend, a belly dancer, who has an opt-in ham list with roughly
>  1000 addresses.  (Of course, with 1000 subscribers a lot of people will
> consider the mailing spam, but won't ask to be removed from the
> list....)  She has divided the list into sub-list of 50-75 addresses.
> Recently her mail often doesn't go through to many of the subscribers.
> The hypothesis is that she has been classified as a spammer.  Moving
> from Cox to Gmail hasn't helped much.
> 
> I am particularly concerned that the anti-Spam filters may be analyzing
> her newsletter and announcement content, and she may be thoroughly hosed.
> 
> What can she do to regain access to the email communication channel?
> She regards it as vital to marketing her business.
> 
> She is considering subscribing to the services of Constant Contact or
> iContact.  Would that work.  Would it be worth the price.  I'd be
> willing to put two or three weekends into solving her problem, but that
> would be about it.  Even then any solution would have to be one she
> could understand and maintain with only a modest investment in non-core
> skills (core skills are dancing and physical therapy school).
> 
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You're sorta flying in the dark if you don't know why "her mail often 
doesn't go through". If she's sending it, then the messages should be 
bouncing back to her, and there would be a "somewhat cryptic but 
informative if you know how to read it" message indicating why it was 
rejected. Once you know the reason, a solution might be possible. 
Without knowing the reason, any changes she might make would likely be 
futile.

When you say "classified as a spammer", that can mean several things. 
It's important to know which rule(s) she's triggering in order to fix 
the problem. I could speculate, but that's gets nowhere.

What do the bounced messages say?

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'