Alarming Increase In Rejected Emails

[phillipsac]

In the last two weeks I have noticed an alarming increase in the rejection rate of our emails sent, through the LCR. I just sent an email to our Ward Council and nearly ALL emails (@gmail.com / @yahoo.com / @hotmail.com) were rejected. These are for accounts that we regularly send to and which regularly receive / accept our emails.

This is becoming a seriously problematic norm, rather than the exception. It's as if ALL the major services have suddenly black-listed us.

Are others experiencing anything similar? If so, is there anything we can do locally, aside from asking our members to make sure they white-list our email domains, in their respective email services?

Thanks,

AC Phillips
Ward Exec Sec

[caillines]

If so, is there anything we can do locally, aside from asking our members to make sure they white-list our email domains, in their respective email services?

This is unlikely to help. The blocks are generally at the provider level (i.e. yahoo) not the recipient level.
I've taken to sending High Council emails directly from my email client to improve the chances of them all getting there.

[russellhltn]

The issue with Yahoo/AOL is well-known at this point. Perhaps now you're getting the rejections instead of it being silent. There have been reports of problems with Gmail, but not consistently.

If your ward has been modifying the email address to prevent sending regular emails to members that don't want them, I'd suggest you make the change to the domain part instead of the name part. Continually sending to non-existent email can cause the sender to be blacklisted.

[phillipsac]

If so, is there anything we can do locally, aside from asking our members to make sure they white-list our email domains, in their respective email services?

This is unlikely to help. The blocks are generally at the provider level (i.e. yahoo) not the recipient level.
I've taken to sending High Council emails directly from my email client to improve the chances of them all getting there.

Yes... I do that on occasion. Fine for smaller groups, but not really workable for regular, all-ward-member emails.

[phillipsac]

The issue with Yahoo/AOL is well-known at this point. Perhaps now you're getting the rejections instead of it being silent. There have been reports of problems with Gmail, but not consistently.

If your ward has been modifying the email address to prevent sending regular emails to members that don't want them, I'd suggest you make the change to the domain part instead of the name part. Continually sending to non-existent email can cause the sender to be blacklisted.

What have you changed on the domain-side that didn't get rejected as well?

[russellhltn]

What have you changed on the domain-side that didn't get rejected as well?

If you don't change the domain, then the domain's email provider keeps getting emails sent to non-existent accounts. At some point they quit trying to tell the sender the error and just bit bucket them. If the domain is non-existent, then it's the church servers that can't figure out who to send it to. You're not ticking off yahoo/aol or Gmail.