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How to reduce the chances of Gmail dumping real emails into spam

Dominik wrote:

MailChimp

Haha… my flying club tried to use mailchimp, but quickly gave up, because apparently lots of people didn’t receive the emails.

LSZK, Switzerland

I seem to recall that Gmail dumped about 1/3 of a mailshot done with Mailchimp, 2-3 years ago.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Good to know – so it seems to be all hype I guess. I know a few startups who use it and I’ll ask them what experience they’ve had with it in the past.

Basically, any mailshot done at high speed is 100% sure to be marked as spam nowadays. Whether it will get through depends on the exact ISP and which databases they refer to in addition. But much of it is certain to be dumped unless additional work is done by the mailer.

A neighbour of mine does bulk mailing commercially, on behalf of big consumer names (often clothing/fashion firms and, he claims, only to people who have positively subscribed) and he has a team of people constantly in contact with the various mail services and negotiates with them to allow a particular mailing to get through, or to allow mailings for next x days. He said AOL were the hardest.

As regards whitelisting a sender, this facility is necessary if email is to be relied on. If Gmail does not allow whitelisting, it’s no good for anything important. The process of whitelisting cannot be spoofed (as suggested by Achim) from other Gmail accounts – it can be done only from a “control panel” belonging to the email account seeking the whitelisting. For example for me to whitelist a sender I have to login into my Messagelabs control panel, and this cannot be spoofed. That action whitelists that sender only for me, too. So if a spammer uses that From: adress to spam 100k people, ML would deliver it to me 100% and would probably dump 100% of all the rest of the same mailing to all their other customers. That is how it should work.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

achimha wrote:

Actually no. Otherwise spammers would use their own Gmail accounts to tell it that it’s not spam and thereby defeat the algorithms.

It should work individually for each account of course! That’s how these things usually work.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

If you are on Gmail and are not receiving EuroGA notifications… then check the following.

Gmail is really aggressive, and utterly stupid, in the crude ways it [mis]identifies spam.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

There are indications that Gmail is dumping yet more stuff these days. An email containing say just “Hello” is likely to be dumped (most likely into one’s Spam box) even if the sender is in your Contacts book.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

While you mentioned Gmail you may also be interested in reading
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-will-target-ads-using-email-addresses-1443468445

United States

I could never use Gmail for my business, where we get unsolicited but genuine emails from all over the world. We would soon go bust.

I don’t know why Gmail does this. They have a vast email client base and they can easily use the standard method of detecting spammers by signaturing emails as they arrive and then using the computationally trivial method of detecting floods with similar signatures.

Still, it keeps Messagelabs and their excellent service in business… at GBP 450/year (for 10 accounts)! Unfortunately ML don’t offer an SMTP server as a back end, with POP/IMAP access, and that prevents most non-expert people using it. You have to run a separate email server which receives the filtered feed and is firewalled to receive only from the ML IP ranges.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Judging by the amount emails about erectile dysfunction, hot milfs and others suggesting all sorts of unmentionable stuff in my spam folder, and the paucity of useful emails, I’d say my Gmail is doing a pretty good job

Last Edited by masterofnone at 29 Sep 12:35
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