SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all fine. I'm using Amazon SES. The big email provider's spam filters are awful and are harming an important project.
They're permanently (I waited over a month) sending all emails from a shared Amazon SES IP range to spam because 0.3% of users who received an email from that IP marked it as spam instead of unsubscribing. I can't believe they think that is a reasonable thing to do. People were taught for years to mark emails as spam instead of unsubscribing since unsubscribing can confirm your email to spammers. 1% of people may also simply be dumb, or may be sabotaging your business on purpose. Making such a drastic decision based on less than half of 1% of email recipients is ridiculous.
Allowing the 1% lowest common denominator to determine what the other 99% are allowed to see is such a terrible policy.
"16% of the population have an IQ under 85; this is not a small issue." - Richard Haier
"Too many people are ignorant or rude or both and use the SPAM button as a convenient way to organize their email" - another support thread
I've done everything in my power to highlight the option to unsubscribe instead of mark an email as spam, including the ridiculous step of opening the email with "You're receiving this email because of xyz. Please blocklist your email if you don't want any more" instead of "Hi, here are the details of an important update".
For years, I've been responding to people who applied via a google form on our website (1.2+ million at this point). When simply sending a first email telling them "you did or did not qualify", the Amazon SES complaint rate has always averaged between 0.3% and 0.5%, and the Google Postmaster rate always jumps between 0%-2%. There's nothing that can be done to bring the rates down besides sending people unnecessary emails in order to lower the average. So sending people actual spam is the only way to decrease the spam rate below that extremely low level.
I should be able to email people who signed up on my website, without all my emails going to spam.
There are times when 50% of my incoming gmail emails go to spam. When I contacted Outlook about this their response went to my Outlook junk folder.
Their spam filters are horrible and they don't seem to care at all. And it's causing major problems with a majority of people missing important emails. A recent example in the news:
Last week, Formula 1 formally rejected a bid by Andretti Cadillac to join the sport as an 11th team and constructor. Among the details in a lengthy justification of its decision, Formula 1 wrote that on December 12, it invited the Andretti team to an in-person meeting, "but the Applicant did not take us up on this offer." Now, it turns out that the Andretti team never saw the email, which instead got caught by a spam filter.
Yahoo said I should request a better IP pool from Amazon SES. I said:
Amazon SES does not have an option to "request a better IP pool". Asking them to assign another IP pool to my account isn't a valid solution anyway. There's no reason to believe that their other IP pools aren't experiencing the same problem, or will experience the same problem at any given point. I'm very surprised that your system is this unsophisticated. I should be able to use Amazon SES without all my emails going to spam.
I searched Stack Overflow and Hacker News and found loads of other people with the same problem, but no one is doing anything about it. I searched for forums dedicated to this topic but didn't find great options (I try to avoid reddit).
I found a way to submit bulk mail appeals to Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook. I think my appeal to Gmail worked (had to wait a few weeks), but Outlook and Yahoo basically just told me "Too bad, there were more than 0.3% spam complaints from your IP pool so now your IP pool is permanently screwed".
This is such a stunningly bad policy. There has to be a way to protest it and get it changed.
EDIT: Per Paul's request, this thread is different from How to send emails and avoid them being classified as spam?, because that one merely lists standard procedures to avoid your emails landing in spam. I have already read through and implemented every recommendation I've found. The reality is that if you have an open application on your website that large numbers of people are filling out, when merely replying to the applicants, it's normal to have a complaint rate higher than 0.3%. I should be able to reply to people who applied on my website without all my replies going to spam. Therefore, the 0.3% rate is inappropriate and there must be a way to protest it and get it changed.
