Lots of bounces and delays

[judy]

I just sent out an eblast and my subscriber count dropped drastically. I currently have over 3000 emails stuck in the mail queue that have been delayed for 4 plus days. When I look at the number of bounces there appears to be alot of hotmail, msn and comcast email addresses in both the bounce list and mail queue.

I know I can read the emails in the mail queue - but I don't see why they're being bounced. When I was having a problem with Yahoo, the bounced email told me that they were being delayed.

How can I figure out why they're bouncing?

[mike2]

You will have to look at your Email programs logs to see if there are any error messages in them.

Otherwise when they finally bounce back to you, there should be some info in the bounced email about what happened.

[DW]

Yes, the server logs should be looked at to see if there are any major blocks.  The blocking hosts may provide a URL which can be visited for more information.  

http://postmaster.aol.com
http://postmaster.yahoo.com
http://postmaster.hotmail.com

Some helpful articles on being removed from Comcast can be found here.

If you discover a major host has placed a temporary block and you have lost a number of subscribers there are ways to reset bounced users I would be willing to assist with.

Regards

[judy]

I found my returned emails - just had to remember where bounce.cgi was sending them to.  :oops:

From there, I was able to eventually find this form to complete for Comcast:
http://www.comcastsupport.com/Forms/NET/blockedprovider.asp

I got a response back almost immediately and they removed me from the blocklist. I do have around 2000+/- subscribers from Comcast and MSN/Hotmail that have been removed from the list that should be reinstated. I would really appreciate help with that.

I also submitted a lengthy form to MSN at:
https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsmsbl&ct=eformts

Hopefully, I get good news back from them as well!

[judy]

Dean-
   Do I just just run a sql command similar to below for both comcast and hotmail to reinstate the dropped subscribers?:
update lm_users set cnf = '1' where email like '%@comcast.net' and cnf = '3';

How do I know how fast emails are going out? MSN sent me the following email saying that my IP is being throttled.  How would I go about slowing it down?

"Hotmail/Windows Live Mail limits the number of e-mail messages a particular IP can send within a time period.  Based on an IP's reputation (built based on various data sources) it is allotted an allowed sending limit per unit time. When an IP (sender) exceeds its allowed limit, any further SMTP commands from the IP will receive the SMTP error code 421 from Hotmail/Windows Live Mail and the connection terminated."

[DW]

Do I just just run a sql command similar to below for both comcast and hotmail to reinstate the dropped subscribers?:
update lm_users set cnf = '1' where email like '%@comcast.net' and cnf = '3';

Yes, this is exactly what I would recommend.

How do I know how fast emails are going out? MSN sent me the following email saying that my IP is being throttled. How would I go about slowing it down?

ListMail queues messages to your SMTP server as fast as it will accept them.  After that, it's up to the server to send the email as it can.  Throttling is coming for SMTP or can be added with a manually-hacked delay per message.

... any further SMTP commands from the IP will receive the SMTP error code 421 from Hotmail/Windows Live Mail and the connection terminated."

4XX errors are temporary so this seems almost exactly like Yahoo throttling.  Your server should retry the message for upwards of 5 days (a common default) before giving up and returning a bounce.  Unless your server is sending several hundred thousand messages per day, or Hotmail's throttling is much more aggressive than Yahoo, your messages should be delivered not too long after they are queued - maybe a few hours later at the most.

If you can get a response from HotMail about their recommended sending rate (ie. your specific throttling limit) that could be very useful information.

Regards

[judy]

Hotmail won't be more specific on their recommended sending rate which is really frustrating. They use a secret formula...

I wrote to my server people to see if EXIM could be tweaked to throttle things down. (Wasn't quite sure what I was asking, but they got the message anyway). They gave the response listed below. Do you see any advantage of trying their suggestion?
====================================
Hello,

This can not truly be accomplish through exim. While there are limitations in exim you can set, the messages beyond the limit simply error out.

If you manage a list of this magnitude, you may wish to install the freely available phpList (installable through Fantastico). This software will allow you to import your existing users and has many features such as automatically removing bounces after so many and also throttling the speed at which mail is sent.

[judy]

One of my newsletter sponsors suggested segmenting my list into 8 separate lists to only send out 10,000 emails at a time to avoid the throttling problem.

Reading through the ListMailPro documentation, I see where I can create a selection of users in the database.

If I segment the list by "Date Added," it works really well until I get to my initial upload group - they all have the same date (over 44,000 records). Is there a way to query last names beginning with letter "A," "B," etc?

Do you have any other recommendations?
Thanks for any replies!