How do you do?

Please specify - is this your own/hosts/ISPs mail server or the target
mail server that is causing the issue?

Not sure there is a 'norm' - each mail server is (or should be) configured
according to the whims^w specification of the owner.

I use one that is configured for a max of 100 simultaneous connections
from any one account and another that is configured for double that. I've
heard of mail servers that pre-allocate a set number of outgoing mails per
day.

In reality I suspect you should have this conversation with the SysAdmin
responsible for your mail server.

--
William Tasso

They are only 'legit' if they have subscribed ... opted in to receive them.
And if they've opted in, they will be unlikely to have you blocked.

If you are sending 'by the hour' It's almost certainly spam.

If you send spam, many will trigger not just filters, but spam reports;
manual or robot. Once there's been enough reports, then all future mail will
be filtered straight to spam folders.

So even those who opted in will be denied a spammer's newletter, because of
the complaints.

Spam filters are getting better by the week - and there's so many, using so
many different technologies, that the best answer is the simplest.

Don't spam.
--

Andrew
http://www.weirdity/ebay/

You are a fucking arse. Ship is a regular in AWW, and good bloke.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

I've no idea whether Ship is a good bloke or otherwise, but until I hear
anything different, I'll believe his post and wont jump to any conclusions.

I'd echo William: we need to know more...

It sounds like it is the outgoing servers that are the problem - I dont see
how many different recipient servers could form a view on his email rate. In
which case, a call to his hosting company is in order.

If the problem lies with the destination or intermediate servers, then this
problem is likely to be something else, in which case we need to know about
what he is sending and how...

Chris

He's an old time regular here (alt.www.webmaster). If Ship says they
are legitimate recipients, then they will be just that.

Which leads me to guess the "spam filters" are intermediate (perhaps
at AOL or Road Runner for example) and the intended recipients are not
receiving the email.

Matt


--
Affordable budget advertising available.
Banner ads, skyscrapers, rectangles and half-pages.
Please email to discuss your requirements.

I'm not aware of any industry norms; it depends on the server
configuration. However, I'm sure the larger, older mailing lists send out
comparable volumes, so I doubt the volume is the issue. You'd need to be
more specific about the problem to get more specific answers--are your
messages going into spam folders and never being read? Are they being
bounced back with an error message (and if so, what message)? Does the
welcome message to subscribers include a reminder that they will need to
whitelist your mailing list to ensure it is not caught by bulk mail
filters?

-Bertha
--
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism
is its adherents. -- George Orwell, the Road to Wigan Pier

What's one of them?

--
William Tasso

Sorry. Ive run ISP servers including mailservers. I dont think this is a
problem of innocence. We always had alternatives available such as elists
or off-hour queues.

If you are overloading their server then do one of your own. Any old
computer in the closet will work.

Gandalf Parker

Thanks for the support, Matt!
Sometimes people can be *stupidly* cynical and fail to answer questions
on the
merits of the question and nobody gets anywhere!

Okay here's the deal.

We have about 30,000 legitimate users on our database. It cost us a
*lot* of money to acquire them through legitimate marketing channels
(much of it printed media, fwiw), so we are extremely careful about how
and when we contact them. We dice and slice the database and send
messages that are often pretty much hand-crafted to users - (depending
upon what they have expressed an interest in before.)

Our emails are pretty much like hand crafted letters that we write to
our customers. We try to avoid some of the more obvious trigger words
much as "free" and "unsubscribe" [Anyone know of a good up-to-date,
comprehensive list, incidentally. Or better yet an online tool one can
use to test copy for filtered words...?]

HOWEVER what we have previously found is that if we send out emails TOO
FAST, then the big domain mailservers (e.g. AOL, Hotmail, yahoo etc)
may assume that we are spamming them. So we not trickle the emails
out... but I am suspicous that we are still sending them out too fast.

As an aside we recently seem to have have discovered that including
*any* images seems to
lower the response rates. And again our suspicion is that our mail is
being filtered our as spam somewhere
along the line!

As you can see below the *specific* problem today was that our own
internal emails have been intercepted by "http://spamcop.net/". And yes
I have been trying to contact our ISP to find out more.

HOWEVER I didnt ask about our specific problems of today, I asked if
there were any
"industry norms" of how fast to send out emails etc, that we would be
well advised to
stick to so as to avoid similar problems in future.

Obviously I *could* contact www.spamcop.net too, but I wanted to know
what you guys thought
that the current state of play is.

So... no we are NOT sending out unsolicited emails - and YES our users
have explicitly requested to
get the information from us on a regular basis.

So finally... how fast *should* we be sending out our emails?!

with thanks


Ship

P.S. Are any of you guys also using btconnect.com (like us) ?
They are ABSOLUTELY AWEFUL in our experience.
Many emails not arriving for hours and hours, sometimes days.
But they have tied us into a 12 month contract from which they wont
let us escape without a punishing financial penalty!
I wouldnt recommend them to my worst enemy!
Okay, yes I would but only my WORST enemy...

P.P.S. here are the bounces of this morning for what they are worth.
And dont look too closely because I have stripped out any identifying
information!

-----Original Message-----
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem
[mailto:[Email Removed]]
Sent: 22 June 2005 13:16
To: [Email Removed]
Subject: Returned mail: Rejected - SPAM from 194.73.73.211 - see
http://spamcop.net/ (from mill.-edited-out-.co.uk)


The original message was received at Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:07:52 +0100
(BST)
from host811-130-161-20.in-addrr.btopenworld.com [811.130.161.20]

----- The following addresses had permanent delivery errors -----
<[Email Removed]>


Message/delivery-status

Reporting-MTA: dns; c2bt1homr03.btconnect.com
Arrival-Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:07:52 +0100 (BST)
X-Message-Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 553 5.3.0 Rejected - SPAM from
194.73.173.211 - see
http://spamcop.net/

Final-Recipient: RFC822; [Email Removed]
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.3
Remote-MTA: DNS; mill.-edited-out-.co.uk
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 553 5.3.0 Rejected - SPAM from 194.73.73.211 -
see http://spamcop.net/
Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:15:52 +0100 (BST)

>>>

If your customers want to be on your mailing lists, remind them when
they sign up for the list that they should whitelist you in their spam
filter.

These aren't sign-ups; he *purchased* this names.

It's spam. spam in a can. [Email Removed] spam.

Kris

I'm sure he is.
And a spammer.
And any friend of yours is probably a lying thief, too.
--

Andrew
http://www.weirdity/ebay/

Not only are you an arse, but you're a troll too! Bloody brilliant!

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/ringmaker - Orca Ringmaker: Host a web ring
from your website!

Yee haa - you gone an' caught yerself a wild hussy this time young 'un.
--
William Tasso

I used to think so, but actually working in "the biz" I've learned it's
not always the case. We occasionally send out an email newsletter to our
customers which no one specifically opted-in for.

However, all of our customers on the email list have previously purchased
some of our not-fscking-cheap electronics, and what we email them is news
of newly released products and upgrades they can take advantage of. There
are close to 80 people on my main list, and I've sent out a number of
"waves", one even with a 400kB PDF attachment![1]

No complaints yet. However, I am *quite* sure our domain is on many of
their whitelists.

Grey

[1] I *did* notify our host before doing this ;)

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/ringmaker - Orca Ringmaker: Host a web ring
from your website!

A real-life example of how the futile "fight" against spam, achieves
nothing other than fucking up innocent users.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Here was me thinking we had seen the worst of the loonies in here.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Yum yum!

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

lol! It's ok, I'm returning him to the water.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Viper, is that you?

--
Dennis

Or remind them not to use filters that block legitimate mail.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Crikey, the competition is intense in here for the most-dense-poster award.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

That's from YOUR side; it's spam from MY side.

Where is YOUR "here"? He cross-posted to alt.marketing.online.ebay,
thus inflicting this SPAM situation on RECIPIENTS.

If you don't get that, I'm sure you're part of the spam I report on
a daily basis.

Why are you posting this to alt.marketing.online.ebay? This isn't
about eBay. It's off topic for this newsgroup.

If you want to ask questions about mail server rate limiting and spam,
I suggest you find groups that discuss those topics, instead of
posting on a group that discusses eBay. One group where this is
on-topic is a mailing list called spam-l. NOTE: Unless your list is
confirmed opt-in, you will not be given ANY assistance on spam-l.
Confirmed opt-in means that your subscribers must confirm via email
that they have elected to receive mail from your list, before you
"add" them to the list or send them any "marketing" emails. Anytime
you send marketing emails to an address that was not confirmed by the
subscriber as desiring said emails, you ARE spamming.

jc

That's why we have deranged loonies, for balance.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Viper and Karim both seem to be away, so it truly *is* a wide open field.

Grey

If one of my emailings ever reaches your inbox, cupcake, please go ahead
and report me. We have a list of customers, all of whom have invested
significant amounts[1] of money in our equipment. No one has begrudged us
a simple newsletter, for updates and new product news, yet.

Grey

[1] Top-of-the-line ATI graphics card? Hah, that's kid-stuff.

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/ringmaker - Orca Ringmaker: Host a web ring
from your website!

Do you have any idea why motions to take action against spam take so long
and mutate so much while being voted on in various countries? It's not
because they don't *want* to take action. Rather it's because it's *not*
as cut-and-dry as you'd like to believe.

Oh, in *most* cases you're correct. But cold-calls, and *targetted*
cold-emails, still bring a lot of small businesses livelyhood which they
couldn't get otherwise.

I myself have sent a number of people unsolicited emails to potential
customers, offering to redevelop their website. Most of them politely
decline. According to your logic, that was me spamming.

You'd actually be right in more cases if you added "bulk" to your list of
criteria.

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/ringmaker - Orca Ringmaker: Host a web ring
from your website!

The problem is getting a single definition of "spam."

That's true too.

Mmmm - were they one-to-one emails? The most commonly accepted definition
I've seen is "unsolicited" + "bulk". One-to-one unsolicited emails aren't
spam, by that definition.

--
JustThe.net - Steve Sobol / [Email Removed] / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Coming to you from Southern California's High Desert, where the
temperatures are as high as the gas prices! / 888.480.4NET (4638)

"Life's like an hourglass glued to the table" --Anna Nalick, "Breathe"

Ship does not need lessons, especially from a fruit cake like yourself.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Yep.

How does the recipient know if it's one-to-one or bulk?

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Indeed. Quite normal for the sane of this world.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

My "here" is alt.www.webmaster. Other people's "here" is the group they
are reading this in.

Spam has nothing to do with it.

You certainly sound deranged enough.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

I don't know, but I think I can give you the confidential email address
of the Spamcop head honcho.

They ticked me off - I owe him one.

Despamproof and email me per the above if you're interested.

A

bought something from them once. If it was a decent deal I'll be back.

Send me one email hawking something, and you're blacklisted from my PC
and my wallet.

A

Yes, it is.

"Targeted" spam is =much= worse than "bulk" spam. It's a good way to
stupidly annoy (and guarantee you'll never get business from) people
who might otherwise actually have been interested in your product,
rather than stupidly annoying a wider segment of the general public.

It was. The only difference between that and the piles of unsolicited
advertising material the mailman brings daily are fewer dead trees for
me to recycle, and that I get to pay for it rather than you. Happy
joy for me, not.

Any unsolicited advertising material arriving through any medium is
unwelcome - whether you choose to be stupid on a large or small scale
is irrelevant.

Then why in the world don't you simply ask them to opt in? Afraid they'd
say no? Too much work for you? Merchants like you are why I need 40
different email addresses!

A

You have to pay to dispose of paper junk mail.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

No no no! Discombobulated! :)

Grey

Glad to see the back of you, I would imagine.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

There are tools that can be used, like Vipul's Razor or the Rhyolite
Software DCC. These tools gather information from many different mail
servers and aggregate them to determine whether a message was sent to lots
of people or not.

From an end-user's point of view, if you get an email and your address
isn't listed in the To: or Cc: headers, the likelihood that the message was
sent in bulk is pretty good. This also applies to legitimate mail from
(e.g.) mailing lists... not just spam.


--
JustThe.net - Steve Sobol / [Email Removed] / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Coming to you from Southern California's High Desert, where the
temperatures are as high as the gas prices! / 888.480.4NET (4638)

"Life's like an hourglass glued to the table" --Anna Nalick, "Breathe"

One thing I've learned from reading your posts is that ANYONE that disagrees
with your views on spam is an idiot... or a "fruit cake"...

--
JustThe.net - Steve Sobol / [Email Removed] / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Coming to you from Southern California's High Desert, where the
temperatures are as high as the gas prices! / 888.480.4NET (4638)

"Life's like an hourglass glued to the table" --Anna Nalick, "Breathe"

Sounds like a great way to further congest the internet in the losing
battle against the spammer.

Eh? If my address isn't in the To: or Cc: headers, where would it be?

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

In your opinion.

A segment of the general public like yourself.

Also in your opinion.

A credo in which you are completely free to believe. However, I was
referring to *real* people, not bitter and misguided crusaders like
yourself.

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/ringmaker - Orca Ringmaker: Host a web ring
from your website!

They almost invariably are Steve. Don't get me wrong, occasionally one
gets reason and sense, but most are evangelistic ignorant zealots.

FWIW, my views on spam are much the same as everyone else, it's a nuisance,
but it's the internet stalling, counter-productive methods that are used in
the losing fight against it, that I mostly disagree with.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

We have their addresses from a subscriber system for firmware updates.
They all "opted-in" for that because it helps to know as soon as the
latest firmware has been released.

All of these addresses were used verbatim for the newsletter, which
*isn't* meant to push new products BTW, but mostly to keep customers
informed of new options for their existing hardware/software. All of the
addressee's use *one* of our software products, but may have a range of
harware. Once in a while we *do* mention a new product or two ;)

Jeez, I don't know why I am defending myself to any of you. It would be
strange to ask them to opt-in twice, even though I know you'd think that
the most "logical" course of action. And so far we have received zero
complaints.

I realize that I have a special situation. Our customers didn't just buy
an iPod or a sack of groceries from us. Each of them has made a
*significant* investment, usually after *much* deliberation by a board of
executives in order to finally choose our company. After the fact, they
generally want to maintain as close a relationship to us as possible
should anything "go wrong".

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/ringmaker - Orca Ringmaker: Host a web ring
from your website!

Now here's where the opinions of you and I diverge. You *can* combat spam
successfully, I don't care what you say. :P I do it at work. It's better
that one or a few people be in charge of looking through the filtered
emails to pluck out the false positives (and there aren't many!), than
have all the hundreds of people in the building spend 5% of their day
sorting the legit from spam on their own.

All those days of 5% adds up, you'd better believe it!

Bcc: perhaps?

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/ringmaker - Orca Ringmaker: Host a web ring
from your website!