Having trouble delivering to Yahoo lately?

[DW]

Check out this very informative post about the recent prevalence of the following error in server mail logs:

Connected_to_x.x.x.x_but_greeting_failed./Remote_host_said:_421_Message_from_(x.x.x.x)_temporarily_deferred_-_4.16.50._Please_refer_to_http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html/

http://www.ahfx.net/weblog.php?article=107

[cindi]

I am getting a lot of those since the middle or end of October.

[mike2]

So fill out their form and attempt to get white listed...  It's not as easy as AOL, but it's not terribly difficult.  

They make you wait about 14 days while they check the emails you are sending, etc...

[cindi]

I have filled out their form once a month for the last two months.  

Any other suggestions???  It's worth a shot to try anything.

[Stefaans]

DW, you are not mentioning Domainkeys or SPF records. Since Domainkeys is Yahoo's own initiative to combat SPAM, it is probably a good idea to set it up if you are sending lots of emails to them. And setting up an SPF record in addition to that will not hurt either  :wink:

[DW]

Here's an addition for bounce.cgi so your users don't bounce for Yahoo's 'temporary deferrals':

Before

Code: [Select]

if($email){
Add

Code: [Select]

# skip if just a warning or deferral
if(index($email,'THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY')>-1){ exit; }
if(index(lc $email,'temporarily deferred')>-1){ exit; }
I'm thinking about putting a database of strings to ignore right in LMP.

[BGSWebDesign]

DW,

I'm thinking about putting a database of strings to ignore right in LMP.

Are you going to do this?  I'm looking at bounced mail today and I see a number of message with this string in it:

Code: [Select]

temporarily off-line

or

Code: [Select]

temporarily deferred

Please tell me you will do this, I must be losing a lot of addresses to 'false positive' bounces.

Also, I use a mailbox for bounce processing, so can you tell me where to insert this code for that?

[DW]

In admin.php after this:

Code: [Select]

function bounce($email,$msg){
 global $utable; global $ctable; global $ltable; global $link;
 if(!valid_email($email)) return false;
Add something like this:

Code: [Select]

if(strstr($msg,'temporarily deferred')) return false;
For bounce.cgi users it can be done in the script. In bounce.cgi after this:

Code: [Select]

# get piped message
$email = '';
while($line=<>){
 $email = $email . $line;
}
Add this:

Code: [Select]

# skip if just a warning
if(index($email,'THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY')>-1){ exit; }
if(index(lc $email,'temporarily deferred')>-1){ exit; }
I really look forward to implementing these ideas right in the script(s).  I hope to de-associate bounce.cgi from the webserver to prevent unnecessary load, too.

Regards

[BGSWebDesign]

DW,

Thanks, but I think what we need is somewhere where we can enter a list of strings, as you mentioned.  There will probably be many more, I've added 3 for now, but I'll be watching my bounced mailbox for others, here's what I have so far:

Code: [Select]


 if(strstr($msg,'temporarily deferred')) return false;
 if(strstr($msg,'temporarily off-line')) return false;
 if(strstr($msg,'THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY')) return false;


[DW]

Here's a page with more details about common Yahoo "deferrals":

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/abuse/abuse-60.html

[DW]

Stefaans,

Sorry for not replying to this sooner.

DW, you are not mentioning Domainkeys or SPF records. Since Domainkeys is Yahoo's own initiative to combat SPAM, it is probably a good idea to set it up if you are sending lots of emails to them. And setting up an SPF record in addition to that will not hurt either

There isn't a good resource for this @ listmailpro.com yet but an interesting discussion has developed here:

http://listmailpro.com/forum/index.php?topic=1903.0

Please start a new post or reply to the above post if you have further questions about DomainKeys or SPF.

Regards

[tammy]

We started getting these Yahoo bounces back in October as well. We filled out their various forms and everything was fine until last month (June). We filled out the forms again, but our July email bounced as well. It seems like we've got two options:

1. Can we send our monthly email to just one part of the list at time? For example, is it possible to send to 1000 subscribers on Monday, 1000 on Tuesday, etc?

2. Is it possible to break our one list into multiple lists and still provide them with the opportunity to unsubscribe from the list they're on? (I saw a past post about using an * instead of the list number to unsubsubsribe from all lists, and I'm hoping that this might work.)

3. If it's possible to use the * to unsubscribe, can I still have them subscribe to a single list? If so, what would the sign-up code look like?

Any other ideas for making it work with Yahoo??? This is so frustrating!

[DW]

Indeed this is frustrating.  We should start a petition or sue them or  something! :lol:

1. Can we send our monthly email to just one part of the list at time? For example, is it possible to send to 1000 subscribers on Monday, 1000 on Tuesday, etc?

This is not built in but as long as you are sending with "Send Email" you could simply close the window part-way through the mailout.  This should have the effect of stopping the mailing, although some servers continue to run the script in the background for a short while or even to completion.  To check whether this happens login to ListMail and find the "Messages are being sent" header.  Refresh the page numerous times to update the "# remaining". It should stop decreasing eventually...  I envision a more frequent scheduled cron task that will allow for things like throttled/batch sending in the future.  If you switch to the alternate mailing method "internal PHP mail" you can set delays between messages and every X minutes - that could help, but then again I'm sure the server tries the email for several days before giving up, so it might be best to get in queue before others on the server do.

2. Is it possible to break our one list into multiple lists and still provide them with the opportunity to unsubscribe from the list they're on? (I saw a past post about using an * instead of the list number to unsubsubsribe from all lists, and I'm hoping that this might work.)

Yes, a very simple custom MySQL query could copy X number of users  users from one list to another. However, this would cause problems with the signup process because of not being able to find dupes and removals.  

You can find the multi/global list remove options by editing your Remove Link message codes (Message Codes -> Global Codes -> "Edit" next to your Remove Link code being used).

3. If it's possible to use the * to unsubscribe, can I still have them subscribe to a single list? If so, what would the sign-up code look like?

No, this is what I was getting at in my #2 response.  I can't recommend this solution.  You might have better luck with throttling sending using internal PHP mail and the delay options it provides.  Still, I'm concerned about that, too, because others on the server can and will continue sending to Yahoo, so the benefit may be minimized...

Any lawyers using ListMail?    Let's force them to have an easy, timely, straight-forward process to review and accept email from legitimate email marketers.  If they spent even one tenth of the time they did fighting spam helping us we'd be flyin'...

You may want to consider a VPS or dedicated server if you aren't on one already.  Typically even without review you should easily be able to get between 10k and 20k sent to Yahoo per day with your own dedicated IP.  (This is a guess based on my experience - I unfortunately have not run an exhaustive analysis of the rate available)

Regards

[DW]

Here's a link straight to Yahoo's form for delivery delay issues:

http://help.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/mail/cgi_defer

[paul]

I submit probably 4 tickets to Yahoo to finally get it fixed.

They wait 5 days and then send you this huge questionnaire to fill out. The first three times I spent about 20 minutes filling it out.  They contacted me 5 days later each time and said, we really can't do anything.

The forth time I said f*ck-it I'll spend an hour writing the questionnaire response so that any idiot can understand how messed up Yahoo's policy is.  They sent me a 5 page questionnaire, I sent them back a 20 response.

Guess what 3 days later they lifted the delay on my IP.  I'm by no means  white listed, but those emails aren't sitting in queue for 2-3 days anymore.