Sender Best Practices

• Be sure your IP is not listed with any of the DNSBLs such as Spamhaus, The CBL, and Trend Micro MAPS.
  • Spamhaus – http://spamhaus.org
  • CBL – http://cbl.abuseat.org/
  • Trend Micro MAPS - http://www.mail-abuse.com/

• Be sure you are following the Can Spam Act. Any lists that you use should be opt in lists and those who receive your mail should be expecting it. This reduces the number of complaints about your IP and increases your IPs reputation.
  • Can Spam Act - http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

• Recipients often report mail they have subscribed to as spam when they don’t recognize it even though they asked for it. Remember to advise customers how often they will receive your mailing, what email address it will be coming from, and what it should look like.

• Be sure to advise all recipients that subscribe to your list to add you to their address book to avoid EarthLink’s Spamblocker from identifying your email as spam.

• You must provide an unsubscribe option for recipients on your mailing list. Unsubscribing should be a simple process such as one click as opposed to logging into a website.

• Process all unsubscribe requests immediately. If customers continue to receive mailings after they have requested to be removed from your mailing list, this will increase the likelihood of complaints which will, as a result, reduce you reputation as a sender and increase your chances of being blocked. 

• If you have a high number of invalid recipients, you risk harming our reputation.  Take time to clean up your list. Not only the customers who have requested to be removed, but also to check for email address that are no longer valid.

• Ensure that your rDNS record is accurate

• Be sure your IP address is static and not dynamic. EarthLink does not accept mail from mail servers with dynamic IP addresses, as they are a haven for compromised machines used to send lots of spam.

• “EarthLink offers a ARF-compliant feedback loops (FBL) to ISPs, ESPs, and other service providers. Please email fblrequest@abuse.earthlink.net with subject “feedback loop request”, and provide the following information:

   

  1. Company name and contact information
  2. Single IP addresses or valid CIDR ranges in a list, carriage return delimited
  3. Email address that reports should be sent to
  4. Administrative contact email address
  5. Type of provider (ISP, ESP, Web Host, etc.)

   

  You should receive a response within 48 business hours.”

• All e-mail must be compliant with RFCs 2821 and 2822.