Aaargh - email confirmation bounces as spam....

[BigDave]

Hope someone can help....

My (VERY non-techie) customer has recently started to get quite a few email order confirmations being bounced back (because the customer's server/email app sees them as spam).

If we take email confirmation off, he gets emails from his punters asking if there's something wrong with the site. I'm getting it in the neck either way - AAAAaaargh!

The best solution is to make the email confirmation an optional checkbox on the order page, but that's way out of my league - anyone got any ideas....?

Thanks for looking/helping

Dave
(www.attacc.com)

[Mike Hughes]

Try changing the 'from' address used for the email.

Some basic spam filters look for 'sales@' or 'orders@' in the from address and decide that email must be spam.

Mike

[BigDave]

Thanks Mike - I'll give it a go and report back (in case anyone else gets this problem)

Dave

[pinbrook]

it is AOL which is boucing these emails...

[BigDave]

Pinbrook - you're absolutely right.
How did you know it was AOL - you having the same problem too?

[pinbrook]

I wonder what is going on here.....

we have several clients who say that actinic customer emails bounce from AOL saying they are spam...

but these customers can be emailed outside of actinic from the same SMTP

is actinic aware of this inconsistency?

[Mike Hughes]

Are you trying the same email?

As I said above, spam filters look at the email title and from address in deciding what they consider to be spam.

Mike

[pinbrook]

Its a different email but from the same address, and it is being sent from the mail tab within the actinic order detail.

I wanted to be sure it was actinic that was causing the bounce and not my mail server

the email address is not sales or orders or indeed anything obvious

if it were the title of the email then surely it would be happening to every actinic user

[Mike Hughes]

All spam filters these days use a scoring mechanism to try and identify spam. Get more than a certain number of points and they'll filter or bounce the email.

So if they see lots of emails from a domain or address with the same title, similar content and certain keywords (such as free, order, viagra, etc) then they identify it as spam.

This doesn't mean that all emails from that domain will be blocked.

The key thing I'm trying to say is that we can't lay the fault at actinic's door if we're not comparing identical emails.

Mike

[pinbrook]

Ok I understand you now Mike....thanks...

Now to investigate if I can change the format of the customer email to make it sufficiently different to get through

[BigDave]

if I can change the format of the customer email to make it sufficiently different to get through

Trouble with that is that we'll be forever playing "catch-up" with the anti-spam software. My customer DOESN'T want to change his email address, and all I've done is write a disclaimer on the footer In Catalog. Bodge it and run, that's my motto!

[pinbrook]

I have now run a test.....on receiving an order from an AOL customer, the auto confirmation email bounced from AOL.

1 I sent the order received email from within the order dialog box, it bounced

2 I copied the email exactly as it was and sent it from Outlook, it bounced

3 I sent the same email again from Outlook with an amended subject line ...it did not bounce.

All tests were from sent from the same SMTP ie that of the server.

Thus I conclude that the server is not causing the problem, it is the content of the email.

I guess the problem has arisen because we have many sucessful actinic shops on this particular server.

Theres not alot we can do unless AOL untighten their spam filters.

Or Actinic allow us to change the subject line of the email, or Actinic contact AOL to tell them about customer confirmation emails and request that they are allowed through the filter

[rmladden]

The sendmail routine in actinic.pm gives you an opportunity to edit the subject. I do this to flag overnight orders. You have to code it in perl. Be very careful.

[NormanRouxel]

The subject line "Order Number:" text is in Design / Text / Phase -1, ID 234. Change that and see if it helps.

If you want to patch the Perl the Subject line is generated in OrderScript.pl in the line

ACTINIC::GetPhrase(-1, 234) . " $::g_InputHash{ORDERNUMBER}",

Here you see that bit from Design / Text and then the order number.

Norman



Norman

[pinbrook]

I've gone with Norman's idea.....much easier to implement. Changed the words "Order Number' to 'Your Ref' in phase/ID

will report back.

Does anyone have an AOL account I could use to test with. Saves me signing up to AOL to get one AAARRRGGHHH!, or saves me from testing on live customers!