You've heard it before from your customers, even from your own lips - I'm sorry, I didn't receive that email. Although it smells a lot like 'My dog ate my homework', it seems it is a legimate complaint. Email is becoming a more widely accepted form of delivering information. Its becoming accepted in courtrooms 1 as a valid document.
According to a recent Clickz article (Blocking of Legit E-mail Still High), one fifth of permission based emails did not reach the inbox of the intended recipient.
When this happens to me, I usually find that my recipient's email domain is Aol. So, off I've gone, several times, on a quest to improve my Aol delivery rates (Tips for Increasing AOL E-mail Delivery Rates - Clickz article).
On my quest, one suggestion is to visit the DNSReport.com site. Be sure to change the domain=mydomain.com to your actual domain name. It tells me I don't have an SPF record. AOL is requesting that all email senders have an SPF record in their DNS lookup.
Found another tool, SPF Wizard. I provide the domain and fill in the other information and it spits out a DNS record that I need to enter as a TXT entry. Off to my control panel and put the new entry in.
Now, for the hard part. Sitting back and waiting for my next email failure from an AOL user.
One question. What if I have no idea what a DNS record is or how to answer the questions or find out the information AOL wants to receive. What if I'm a fairly typical internet user - with a small client base and I send emails to AOL customers? Isn't that the typical person?
AOL is commited to protecting their customer base from SPAM. I'm not spamming and Mary Jones in Debuque2 who owns an online candle making shop isn't spamming either. But she still has to struggle to deliver her emails as if she was. I'm trying to help Mary, I'll keep on the trail of techniques to improve your email delivery rates.
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