We have launched a website (a weekly football prediction game) and each round the users/players get automated emails from the site advising them if they are through to the next round - or not etc.

One aspect of the game is fan rivalry and so we like to send game updates - who is left in vs who else etc. But the emails do not seem to be getting read - or should I say, they are being put in spam folders.

Our users are opted in and want the information - and complain when they do not see an update. We have a message on the site asking them to add info@lastfan.com to their address book but to no avail.

I was told "there are things you can do on your server" by a technical friend - but he could not tell me what - he just thought that was the case. Is this true?

All pointers appreciated.

thanks, David Murphy

ps the site is www.lastfan.com if that helps

Thanks for the intro Matt!

David a few things to consider:

I assume you have checked your messages for any spam indicators? If not here is a good site to do it - www.emailreach.com they have a free trial - they also do the blacklist checking

Check if you are on blacklists - this is a great site for it is http://www.blacklistalert.org/ - which is free forever.

You are currently listed on AP news - nothing to get into a fuss about as they are pretty obscure as far as blacklists go. I have assumed that you are sending from that domain. If this isn't the case you can enter the actual IP you are sending from.

Now work out which domains you need to worry about, that is which ones make up the larger proportions of your list, you can almost guarantee hotmail, yahoo and Gmail will be your top three - but good to check. Assuming you are a "typical" sender these are your first port of calls:

Hotmail, first off go here:

http://postmaster.msn.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP

And register for the Junk mail reporting program, then for SNDS - SNDS allows you to monitor the response to your mailings.

Yahoo you need to go here:

http://feedbackloop.yahoo.net/

Both the feedback loop and the Junk mail reporting program allow you to be informed if people are marking you as junk, this enables you to remove them from future sends - this is good because too many people marking you as junk will lead your deliverability to be negatively effected.

Gmail go here (lots of good advice)

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81126

If you have no spam indicators and follow the instructions on all the above and change when they change you are unlikely to have any issues.

Alternatively you could just pay a ESP like pure360 to do it ;-)

Please get int ouch if you want more info

Marc

marc.munier@pure360.com