Email Auto Responder skips emails

I repeatedly have clients miss an email in the autoresponder series. It's not always the same email that is missed either. Some clients seem to get them all. It's very random. It's not sent to a spam folder because they will get 1-5 miss #6 and then get 7 and 8. This isn't good for the business because I send out access codes so they can get to information on my site.

Has any body else had this problem? What can be done about it?

Thanks,

Gary

Are your member using free a email service?

Like MSN, hotmail,Yahoo, gmail and so on?

Email skips

They all have their own email accounts through different services. Sometimes they get their auto responder emails on schedule, sometimes they don't. I don't understand how this is a variable.

Most definitions of spam are based on the e-mail being Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE). That is, spam is e-mail that is both unsolicited by the recipients and there are many substantively similar e-mails being sent. Spam is usually also unwanted, commercial and sent by automated means and some definitions include those aspects.

See this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam
Techniques to block, filter, or otherwise banish spam from users' mailboxes

Email still doesn't make it

That's a great definition of spam, but that doesn't help me solve my problem.

I just got another user who got the email for session 4 but didn't get the emails to session 2 or 3.

Do spam filters see Amember as a generator of spam emails? If so, then why only some times?

Because many of the emails get through, I don't think this is the issue. I would think spam filters would be more consistent one way or another.

Besides I've had people check their spam filters and found nothing. It's like they were never sent.

I don't know what the problem is but it is requiring me a lot of manual follow up and is costing me time and is beginning to be a real nuisance.

Where do I begin looking to find the cause of the inconsistency.

Thank you to anybody who will help,

Gary

Just because you're sending bulk Email, doesn't automatically make you a spammer. There are two key points to always keep in mind when beginning a bulk Email ad campaign:

1. Where did you get your Email addresses?
Did you buy an Email address list from a reputable company that consumers opt-in to receive such mailings? Did you collect your Email addresses from newsletter subscribers and tell them up front they may receive special offers from time to time by signing up?

Know the answer to these questions before beginning your Email ad campaign. If you went to a message board covering your type of business and grabbed the first 1,000 Email addresses you see for your Email ad campaign, you're a spammer.

2. Send spam free Email by knowing what to look for within your own message.
People who have asked for your mailings may not be getting them because spam blocker software and Email filters are set so high that they sometimes catch mail you really do want to receive.

For someone about to embark on an Email ad campaign, you can reduce your chances of your message getting discarded by these automations by using these quick tips:

A) Avoid caps. JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK YOUR MESSAGE WILL BE LOUD AND CLEAR IN ALL CAPS DOESN'T MEAN IT WILL ACTUALLY MAKE IT TO YOUR RECIPIENT. Spam blocker software and Email filters are designed to look for capital letters and will immediately flush your Email.

B) Avoid excessive exclamation marks. Your message is powerful!!!!!! What could say that better than a few dozen exclamation points at the end of your sentences? This is another alarm signal for spam blocker software and Email filters. Exclamation points can't prove a point any better than simple text...especially when those exclamation points get your message trashed before it even reaches your intended audience.

C) Avoid repeating the same words and phrases over and over. In advertising, you're taught to use a subtle message while driving home points within your copy. You can do this without being repetitive. Many people Buy Diet Pills and when they run out they Buy Diet Pills and what could be better than if you Buy Diet Pills. this is another tip off to spam and spam blocker software and Email filters will catch it.

D) Send your message to yourself using spam blocker software. If your own spam blocker software catches the Email, chances are it's going to be caught by someone else's. Play around with your message until you receive it without your spam blocker software or Email filter catching it. When it arrives in your inbox without being caught, you're ready for your Email ad campaign to begin.
(Open a free email account also test your Email ad campaign there.)

More info at:
http://www.dynamicmember.us/url/example1.htm

Hi Gary,

I don't know for sure, but part of the problem may be the fact that you're using the amember mailing program which is a script hosted on your server. Because it's hosted on your server all mail is sent from a single IP address and sometimes ISPs or email providers will identify this as spam and then block it after a certain number of messages are sent from a single IP. This may explain why some of your messages get through and some don't.

Your other option is to use an autoresponder system that's dynamically hosted on many different IP addresses. The autoresponders at aweber and 1shoppingcart do this, and that's why they can get much higher deliverability than a script hosted on your own server.

For my business it's very important that my customers get their email as well, so that's why I'm trying to figure out how to integrate amember into my autoresponder at 1shoppingcart.

Cheers,

Allan

Gary I am having the same issues. And with very little results on support end. To all others posting, thanks for the definitions of Spam etc... but it is not the issue. The issue is that the software is not sending our emails to our users.

Amember as Autoresponder...

I am successfully using amember as my autoresponder with joomla/communitybuilder. Here's a couple of things that I did to get it delivering the majority of the mail that I send.

Use best practices to reduce your spam scores in the content and layout of the messages you send but from a setup prespective this is what I've found works.

1. Use the "send via smtp" mail settings.

2. Use the same domains for your email addresses, smtp mail server and amember. For example don't have the sending email address as mail@domain.com and have amember installed on domain2.com using the mail server on domain3.com

The easiest way to do this is to have a dedicated machine with it's own mail server on the same domain. My amember install is on www.wmfsb.com. the smtp server is on the same machine named wmfsb.wmfsb.com and I send mail out using an email address mail@wmfsb.com -

At least this is what I have running and all is well!

Lots to learn

Thanks,

I haven't checked back in a while and now I've seen that people have put in what could be helpful information. I just have to figure out what it means.

1. Use the "send via smtp" mail settings.

For instance where is this "send via smtp" mail setting? Is this an amember function or is this in my website control panel settings.

PS I use lunarpages.

Also, I am considering upgrading to a virtual private server. Would this help?

I will have to get some help in trying these things that you describe. I am technically unfamiliar with them.

BTW. This is not a bulk email campaign issue. Nor is it a problem with people's spam filters. My clients have checked their spam folders, adjusted their filters and not found seen any emails from the autoresponder. Some emails from the autoresponder sent to my own address didn't arrive. I hope that makes the problem clearer.

Thanks for all your help.

Gary

Just for completion sake, make sure you arent reaching the send threshold for your hosting account. HostGator allows 200 per hour with a minimum 6 seconds between emails, which is easily reached with a basic site, especially when broadcasting. Just check with your host, you may just be reaching your limit of sends per that hour etc. Moving to a dedicated machine should fix that problem.

Login to amember admin panel.

Select Setup/Configuration from the left hand menu
On new screen click on "email" from the top menu selections
Look in the "E-mail System Configuration" section and make sure smtp host is selected.

You'll have to add your smtp username and passwords and test of course....

chasing ghosts

I don't seem to have the same section you mention, "E-mail System Configuration" Perhaps I have an earlier version of amember. or it is just labeled different.

In any case, I've had an expert trouble shoot this for me, and it appears that there is a problem with the PHP code that will cause it to intermittently skip emails.

I'm thinking of emailing Alex and the admin crew about the issue, but I don't think they will believe me. They are pretty adamant that there isn't a problem with the system. I'm not sure what I should do about it.

knew it

Ha, I thought as much. There are some weird bugs in amember. I had my autoresponder list disappear within the amember admin after I discovered random emails were not getting to their recipients. Then, I was trying to re-add the emails on specific dates, yet the system would not let me add to those dates, telling me that there was already an existing email on that date (which I could not view or edit) I mailed amember regarding this and they never got back to me.
Amember has many powerfull features and they recent integration with 1shoppingcart.com has been great. That said, they need to drop some change and hire a team to fix all their bugs.

I won't be buying amember again. Too bad, I wish it was rock solid.

Please email them! Could you post the fix here too?
If there is a bug, I'd like to fix my sites.


David

Your Host Might Be Blocking Your Emails

Many of the big hosts have hourly limits on the number of email that you send from your shared account on THEIR servers. I know before I started my own hosting company my original hosting provider (read big and popular) limited us to 2K emails per hour.

Obviously this can cause big problems for anyone marketing online with email.

Our host http://www.mysmallbizwebhosting.com doesn't limit the number of emails that are sent each hour so it isn't a problem.

We've never had any trouble wiht amember sending emails at all. Amember is doing it's job properly, your hosting provider might not be.

I sent off to to Alex and Oleg the problem with the autoresponder email routine. I imagine that they will incorporate the correction into future versions. We'll see.

The problem was in the code that looks to see what autoresponder emails are to be sent. Apparently if it gets to a subscriber that has "unsubscribed" the routine stops looking any further down the list. If an unsubscribed person is at the top of the list, then no one else gets an email that day. If the unsubscribed person is half way through, then half the emails get sent out that day. That's why the autoresponder emails have been so erratic for me in the past,,, and apparently for other people as well.

Wow, that's a problematic bug indeed. Glad you submitted it. I hope this is resolved soon.