Missing emails
Over the last few months we have been receiving more calls from our websites owners reporting that they are not receiving their emails. They are told that visitors have filled out "contact me" forms but they have not received them. Their prospect database reveals that visitors have submitted various forms for compelling offers, but no emails. We realize the importance of these emails - they represent leads for you. We've investigated every call that has come into technical support and would like to summarize what we've found.We have confirmed that in all cases, emails were successfully sent from the WebCubic website to the email address indicated on the website itself. There was no problem with the website.
- in one case where the website owner was using WebCubic's web-based email, we had to purge some emails from the InBox because it was too full. The InBox in our web-based email is often smaller than those found in other popular web-based emails like hotmail.com. We therefore encourage all users of WebCubic's web-based email to regularly download their emails and not let it fill up their InBox.
- in all other cases, it seems that email was being rejected or classified as "junk mail". In these cases the emails ended up in the "junk mail" folder.
- however, in one instance, there was nothing in the "junk mail" folder. Upon further investigation, we found that items directed into the "junk mail" folder are immediately deleted. This was an application setting so we adjusted the setting so that "junk mail" was not automatically deleted, and the emails were allowed to remain in the "junk mail" folder.
This begs the question as to WHY emails sent from WebCubic websites are ending up in the "junk mail" folder.
- we've noticed that even emails that are being sent directly from MS Outlook also end up in the "junk mail" folder. The problem is, therefore, not directly caused by or limited to WebCubic websites.
- this occurs even when a number of other email clients are being used. We've noticed this failure with hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, SBCglobal, and others.- we've also observed that users that use MS Outlook and accepts those email systems generally find their emails in the normal InBox.
In summary, we suggest that users modify their options for their email client application. With the great increase in the number of spam emails, the settings are routing even good emails (such as those being sent by WebCubic website) to the "junk mail" folder.
In a later blog posting, we'll discuss characteristics of those emails more like to be considered "junk mail".
posted by Shig Nishio @ 1/28/2006 08:46:00 PM
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