Ham list

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 19:11 -0700, Trent Shipley wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> 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).
----
any time you try to run any type of e-mail communication system, you
have to have some 'control' accounts to verify deliver, spam scores,
etc.

So the first thing to do is always include at least one control account
with each batch. This control account must reside on a server that has a
very active/effective spam control system and report in the headers so
you can see how it is scored. When you the spamassassin scoring, it
should become obvious what needs to be changed. This system should also
have some of the typical RBL's too.

I think you are making a mistake in just assuming that the origin of her
e-mail is the issue.

Craig


-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.