Re: Email Deliverablity, Spam, Blacklisting, etc.

Anonymous · ‎05-02-2016

We are researching different email deliverability vendors that we could employ. Any suggestions to our current issues below would be great!!

Background:

Sometime in 2014, our company was reported to GoDaddy. Prior to this, there were no issues with email deliverability.

In response, my company set up a new domain for email campaigns with a forward to our current website. Ever since, all response rates have declined. I believe that the majority of our emails are landing in junk/spam folders. The decline in response rates is not due to content as it is not new content. I believe it is safe to assume the problem lies with the domain. I have some theories as to why, but am not an expert in this area. I think that the fact the domain is forwarded may trigger some spam filters. We are not using the best email platform right now (Zoho Campaigns), which may also affect deliverability.

We are also moving to Marketo right now (just finished foundation training) which I believe will also improve deliverability. Then today, a coworker sent an email from his corporate email address to a friend about possible employment, and the email landed in his junk box.

Also concerned about that our domain does not having a security certificate or DMARC policy, although the domain that it is forwarding from does. One of the email deliverability vendors we are exploring offered a free test on both domains . It reported no SSL cert for both. The challenge is that the domain for our corporate website is hosted by Drupal Gardens. We cannot add an SSL cert to the actual domain. Drupal offers a cert to all web sites hosted on their platform and does not issue CSRs.

SanfordWhiteman · ‎05-02-2016

Well, I wouldn't say http://dkg.drupalgardens.com is "redirected". In fact that URL stays put. http://www.davidkennethgroup.info is permanently 301-redirected to http://www.davidkennethgroup.com, and the latter hostname is a CNAME for dkg.drupalgardens.com -- guess that's what you mean, but I like to be precise.

Either way, I think you misunderstand the connection between [a] the domain you use in your SMTP sender (MAIL FROM) and/or message headers (From/Reply-To), call it example.info; and [b] the HTTP presence of http://www.example.info.

While SSL is strongly advised for other reasons, it doesn't matter for deliverability if links in the email body are to http://www.example.info or https://www.example.info. And if you're sending from user@example.info, the recipient's mailserver is never going to check the DMARC policy/DKIM signature/SPF record of example.com. Those are all SMTP-level measures, not web-level. The fact that a web URL redirects to another web URL is irrelevant to SMTP policies (in fact, if it were not irrelevant, such a relationship could and would be abused by spammers).

On the other hand, from the deeper content inspection standpoint, the fact that example.info redirects to example.com and example.com was blacklisted in the past (and therefore may still be on private URI blacklists, though it is not on the public ones as far as I can see) could readily impact deliverability. Frankly, I would stay as far as away from that blacklisted domain as possible until/unless it can be proven that there's another wrinkle that's unrelated to this old (but, essentially, still primary) domain.

And, of course, proper DKIM setup and accurate SPF are vital. SPF isn't necessary w/Marketo unless you sign up for their additional "branded sender" service. But DKIM must be signing correctly if it is enabled: it is far worse to have a broken DKIM signature than to have no signature. Your DKIM record for M1._domainkey.davidkennethgroup.info is broken, so if Marketo is signing your emails, they must be permfailed for broken DKIM. (I can't say whether your Zoho selector was similarly broken because I don't know your client ID over there.)

I think you should work closely with someone who understands the full spectrum of SMTP and HTTP and the measures you've taken so far to rescue your reputation.

View solution in original post

SanfordWhiteman · ‎05-02-2016

Please post your actual domains... this is no place for general guesswork!

Anonymous · ‎05-02-2016

Current domain: www.davidkennethgroup.com

Email domain: www.davidkennethgroup.info

Website domain that's redirected: http://dkg.drupalgardens.com.

SanfordWhiteman · ‎05-02-2016

Well, I wouldn't say http://dkg.drupalgardens.com is "redirected". In fact that URL stays put. http://www.davidkennethgroup.info is permanently 301-redirected to http://www.davidkennethgroup.com, and the latter hostname is a CNAME for dkg.drupalgardens.com -- guess that's what you mean, but I like to be precise.

Either way, I think you misunderstand the connection between [a] the domain you use in your SMTP sender (MAIL FROM) and/or message headers (From/Reply-To), call it example.info; and [b] the HTTP presence of http://www.example.info.

While SSL is strongly advised for other reasons, it doesn't matter for deliverability if links in the email body are to http://www.example.info or https://www.example.info. And if you're sending from user@example.info, the recipient's mailserver is never going to check the DMARC policy/DKIM signature/SPF record of example.com. Those are all SMTP-level measures, not web-level. The fact that a web URL redirects to another web URL is irrelevant to SMTP policies (in fact, if it were not irrelevant, such a relationship could and would be abused by spammers).

On the other hand, from the deeper content inspection standpoint, the fact that example.info redirects to example.com and example.com was blacklisted in the past (and therefore may still be on private URI blacklists, though it is not on the public ones as far as I can see) could readily impact deliverability. Frankly, I would stay as far as away from that blacklisted domain as possible until/unless it can be proven that there's another wrinkle that's unrelated to this old (but, essentially, still primary) domain.

And, of course, proper DKIM setup and accurate SPF are vital. SPF isn't necessary w/Marketo unless you sign up for their additional "branded sender" service. But DKIM must be signing correctly if it is enabled: it is far worse to have a broken DKIM signature than to have no signature. Your DKIM record for M1._domainkey.davidkennethgroup.info is broken, so if Marketo is signing your emails, they must be permfailed for broken DKIM. (I can't say whether your Zoho selector was similarly broken because I don't know your client ID over there.)

I think you should work closely with someone who understands the full spectrum of SMTP and HTTP and the measures you've taken so far to rescue your reputation.