Cannot send Emails to AOL accounts

[sara.bruse]

I tried sending a test verion of my email to all major email clients, and they all worked perfectly, with the exception of AOL. The emails aren't appearing ANYWHERE in the AOL account-- spam or otherwise-- even with the spam filter completely off. I tried sending the email from a test campaign and composing it individually as well. The same email can be recieved by the AOL inbox from my personal email account with no problem. I talked to my IT department and they said it may be because AOL has completely blocked anything coming from Sugar. Is there a way around this? Thanks in advance for any and all help

[sacramentojoe]

Have you guys been sending emails before?
Unfortunately, AOL is a pain in the arse.

if you have been sending emails before, you might want to check to see if you're black listed.

[sara.bruse]

This is our first email campaign, so we aren't blacklisted. Is there a way to work around AOL's filters to get our emails through?

[sacramentojoe]

To understand how email gets blocked, you need to know a little bit about how email works. When an email is sent, the sending server looks up the domain name of the destination email (yourcompany.com). It uses the domain name to ask your Domain Name Server (DNS) what the name of the destination mail server is. It then looks up the IP address of this server. Finally it packages the email message into a series of Internet packets and sends it to that address. Part of the address of a mail server is a “port number”. Ports are a way to tell which incoming information goes to which program on the same pc. Think of it like the apartment number for a building. One port is for email (port 25), another for web sites (port 80).

The destination server may look up the source address of the email, and see if it matches the domain name in the email. One of the big ways spammers hide themselves is by faking the source of the email. If the email doesn’t match, the email server receiving the message either drops it, or sends back a message to the source server requesting that it be resent. For this to work, your server IP address has to be listed correctly on the internet. In some cases this can be set up incorrectly, causing mail to be blocked.

Another recent variation on this is the use of “SPF” records. This is a special entry in the Domain Name Server that specifies what email servers could legitimately be sources for email for that domain. Many Internet providers are making this a requirement, including AOL. If you are able to send to some places, but not to AOL addresses, this may be the cause. You will need to have your DNS provider or computer consultant add an SPF record to your Domain Name Server.

[michaelest]

SPF stands for "Sender Policy Framework". If you want to generate the DNS information, go here: http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html . You'll need to add the DNS info as a TEXT record.

You might also want to look into using Domain Keys (DKIM), as Yahoo! is going this route. Installing this is a bit more complicated - you'll need access to your MTA (mail transfer agent).

We had the same problem with AOL and it wasn't until we got both SPF and DKIM working did any mail make it through.

good luck.

- Michael

[sara.bruse]

Thank you for your help, we've got the problem resolved!