Best Practice For "Email This Page"

Forum Moderators: phranque

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Best Practice For "Email This Page"

Tips for avoiding the dreaded spam folder

maximillianos

3:42 pm on Jan 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

I am doing a bit of revamping of my site and was taking a look at my "Email this page" functionality.

It got me to thinking about how mail providers monitor for spam. Given a choice, would it be best to:

A) Have the email sent from your domain (ie - notify@mysite.com)

B) Have the email FROM field be the user who is sending it... (ie - joeschmoe@mail.com)

My gut tells me that option (A) would be safer, since you are sending an email from an address where the domain matches the site/server domain.

However option (B) is nice, because it personalizes the email, and the recipient may recognize the sender easier. However does option (B) open the door to be viewed more likely to be spam?

Thanks for any thoughts and advice.

Regards,
Max

piatkow

3:56 pm on Jan 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

Option B will have a high failure rate. For example I know from experience that neither Hotmail nor AOL will accept a spoofed Hotmail address.

Option A will be more likely to be zapped unread as the recipient doesn't recognise your address.

maximillianos

4:07 pm on Jan 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the feedback.

Maybe a combination of both would be best practice? Like perhaps putting the sender's e-mail address in the subject line, but having the FROM field be from my server (ie - notify@mysite.com)?

phranque

1:30 am on Jan 30, 2009 (gmt 0)

i would suggest either:
- setting the Reply-To header to the sender's email address and the From header to the server address
or
- setting the From header to the sender's email address and the Sender header to the server address

i would also make it clear in the Subject that it came from your service/site and if you have the name of the sender also try to use that in the subject line.