sending email -- tagged as SPAM

[middletree]

My little web-based app has a page which enables a user to send an email to
a list of people. The list is db-built and variable. In testing, it sent me
the email and it looked fine. But for some recipients, it is alerting their
SPAM filters.

I should add that I don't have a choice on this site, of which email
component to use. The host is using something called MailEnable.

One user sent me this info, to help me know why his particular filter thinks
this is SPAM.

Message scored 7.5 out of a required 5.0 positive tests.

1.3 MSGID_NO_HOST Message-Id has no hostname
0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
0.1 MIME_HTML_ONLY BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
0.7 MIME_HTML_NO_CHARSET RAW: Message text in HTML without charset
1.8 INVALID_MSGID Message-Id is not valid, according to RFC 2822
1.9 MIME_HEADER_CTYPE_ONLY 'Content-Type' found without required MIME
headers 1.7 HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG HTML-only message, but there is no HTML
tag


My question: if I change the email to plain-text-only, will that eliminate
most or all of the above concerns?

 

[ASP.Confused]

Well, one of those says that there is no HTML tag...format your e-mail as if
it were a real HTML page (with all of the required tags.) Sometimes, when
I'm generating e-mails, I find it helpful to use a WYSIWYG editor to do the
basic design.

 

[middletree]

Yeah, I guess it seems like I should have gotten that, but I didn't until
you pointed it out. Weird criteria to decide something's spam, but easily
fixed.

 

[CJM]

Doesnt your email component allow for multipart emails, where you can offer
a HTML part and a text part? If so, always offer a plaintext version,
regardless of whether you offer a HTML one.

As the other poster says... format your HTML like it was designed to be a
VALID HTML page. That means you must indicate a charset:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

I'm guessing that the combination of these will knock you 'score' down to
5.0 and it could sneak through.

You will have to speak to your IPP or the SpamFilter publishers to find out
more about Message ID's and Content-Types.

Chris