Mike718NY wrote:A customer with an "AOL" email address complained that they never received
an email receipt.
I tested with 2 AOL email addresses and one worked but
the other one didn't ???
(aside from not getting an email after placing the order,
emails sent from the admin also didn't work).
Has anyone else experienced this? If you have an AOL account(s), I
would test this out for yourself.
Happens all the time.
AOL has probably the most sophisticated (and costly) anti-spam filtering systems in the world. Their massive userbase gets swarmed with junk mail, so their rules are far more strict than most other places.
My understanding thus far is there are at least two types of AOL blocks:
1. Temporary 24-hour block based on AOL user response. If an AOL user marks an email as "junk", the sending IP and domain get flagged. Too many marks in a specific (and undisclosed) period of time and AOL will temporarily ban your mail server IP and the Reverse DNS host name for that IP. Ban usually lasts 24 hours from the last AOL user mark.
2. Black list. This one takes 3-5 days to get off once you are on it. Usually is the result of a zombie or bot program infecting one of your PCs and sending millions of emails to AOL as fast as your bandwidth can handle. If you send a significant amount of email to AOL and all of it has the same similarities, you risk getting blacklisted.
When you use a shared hosting provider email server to send your emails, the problem gets worse. AOL sees the email from many different companies all originating from the same mail server IP. So the "problem child" might not even be you but rather another customer at the ISP. Narrowing this down AND getting the ISP to make the effort of review and enforcement is both time-consuming and difficult.
The best (and most costly) solution to large volume email is keeping your store mail traffic on a separate email domain and mail server IP from your regular office email domain and traffic. That way, if AOL (or anyone else for that matter) blocks the store mail, you can at least still continue doing business with your office email accounts.
I have one client I configured with dual internet connections from completely separate ISPs. This gave them the ability to manage completely separate internet email identities and thus allow corporate email communication to continue should the store email server get blacklisted.
Finally, AOL email can be slow. I've seen 8-hour delays when sending simple messages.
In the end, simple is better. The more graphics and HTML linking you add, the more likely a positive spam score. Don't use alot of sales pitches or common/generic sales language in your text - spam filters will most certainly score those higher. Inform the recipient and stop.