Rules of use for sending emails with ALIX
Summary
This document summarizes the rules for using the ALIX email service based on best practices and events that may occur while using it. Please note that sending emails by ALIX is a function that canbe revoked if the following rules are not followed.
Email Best Practice
Even when you have your customers' interest in mind, you may be faced with situations that negatively impact the deliverability of your messages. The following sections contain recommendations that will help you ensure that your communications by courtreach the intended audience.
General recommendations
Put yourself in your customers' shoes. Ask yourself if the message you're sending is a message you'd like to receive in your inbox. If the answer to this question is not an enthusiastic "yes", it is better not to send the message.
Some sectors have a reputation for poor quality or evenmalicious practices. If you are involved in the following areas, you should closely monitor your reputation and resolve issues immediately:
Mortgages
Credits
Pharmaceuticals and food supplements
Alcohol and tobacco
Adult Entertainment
Casinos & Gambling
Work from Home Programs
From address considerations
- Think carefully about the addresses from which you send couriers. The shipping address ("From") is one of the first pieces of information your recipients see and it can leave a lasting first impression. In addition, some ISPs associate your reputation with your shipping address.
- Consider using subdomains for different types of communications. For example, suppose you're sending emails from the exemple.com domain, and you plan to send marketing and transactional messages. Rather than sending all your messages from exemple.com, send your marketing messages from one subdomain, for example, marketing.exemple.com, and your transactional messages from another subdomain, such as commandes.exemple.com. Separate subdomains develop their own reputation. Using subdomains reduces the risk of damage to your reputation if, for example, your marketing communications land in a spam trap or trigger a content filter.
- If you plan to send a large number of messages, do not send these messages from an ISP-based address, such as expediteur@hotmail.com. If an ISP detects a large volume of messages from expediteur@hotmail.com, those emails are not treated like those from an outgoing email sending domain that you own.
- Work with your domain registry office to ensure that the WHOIS information for your domain is accurate. Maintaining an honest and up-to-date WHOIS registry demonstrates that you value transparency and allows users to quickly determine if your domain is legitimate.
- Avoid using a no-reply address, such as no-reply@exemple.com, as a shipping address ("From") or reply-to address ." Using a short address l no-reply@ sends a clear message to your recipients: you do not allow them to contact you and you are not interested in their comments.
Authentication
- Authenticate your domain with SPF. This authentication method confirms to recipients that every email you send is indeed from the specified domain.
- Sign your outgoing messages with DKIM. This step confirms to recipients that the content has not been modified as it passes between the sender and the recipient.
- You can test your SPF and DKIM authentication settings by sending a message to an email address based on an ISP you have, for example, a personal Gmail or Hotmail account, and then viewing the message headers. The headers indicate whether your attempt to authenticate and sign the message was successful.
Compliance
- Keep in mind the laws and regulations that apply to marketing messages and anti-spam in the countries and regions to which you send emails. You must ensure that the email you send complies with these laws. This guide does not cover these laws. It is therefore important that you look for them. For a list of laws, see anti-spam legislation by country on Wikipedia.
- Always consult a lawyer for legal advice.
How email is sent and how it works
This topic describes what happens when you send a email with ALIX, as well as the various events following the shipment:
- A first check by ALIX and the email sending service. If the sender's email request to ALIX fails, ALIX responds to the sender with an error and deletes the email. The request may fail for several reasons. For example, the request may be incorrectly formatted or the email address may not have been verified by the sender.
- If the verification is successful, the sending of the email will be made to the recipients and here are the possible results:
- Delivery is successful and the recipient does not object to the email – The email is accepted by the ISP, which delivers it to the recipient.
- Definitive Error Message – The email is rejected by the ISP due to a persistent condition or by ALIX because the email address is on ALIX's suppression list. An email address is on alix's suppression list if it recently caused a permanent error message for an ALIX customer. A permanent error message with an ISP can occur when the recipient's address is invalid. A definitive error message notification is returned by the ISP to ALIX, which notifies the sender by email, depending on the sender's configuration.
- Temporary error message – The ISP cannot deliver the email to the recipient due to a temporary condition, such as if they are too busy to process the request or if the recipient's mailbox is full. A temporary error message may also occur if the domain does not exist. The ISP returns a temporary error message notification to ALIX, or, in the case of a domain that does not exist, ALIX cannot find a mail server for the domain. In both cases, ALIX attempts to deliver the email for an extended period of time. If ALIX is unable to deliver the email during this period, it will send you a return notification to the sender by email. If ALIX can deliver the email to the recipient on a new attempt, the delivery is successful.
- Complaint – The email is accepted by the ISP and delivered to the recipient, but the recipient considers the email to be spam and clicks the "Mark as Spam" button in their email client. If ALIX has a feedback loop configured with the ISP, a complaint notification is sent to ALIX, which forwards it to the sender. Most ISPs do not provide the addressof the complaining recipient: the complaint notification sent by ALIX therefore provides the sender with a list of recipients who may have sent the complaint, based on the recipients of the original message and the ISP from which ALIX received the complaint.
- Automatic reply – The email is accepted by the ISP and the ISP delivers it to the recipient. The ISP then sends an automatic response such as an out-of-office message to ALIX. ALIX forwards the automatic reply notification to the sender.
- When sending email, you should avoid getting events from the final error messages and complaint messages. These events, if repeated, could result in the temporary suspension of email sending with your ALIX system.
Related Articles
How to enable emails in ALIX
Summary Communication with suppliers and customers is a crucial task to ensure your business operations. To reduce the number of steps to send a purchase order or a sales order, you can send them directly in ALIX. Here is how to enable configurations ...Use ALIX when a White List is Enabled on the Network
Summary If the security of your computer network requires the use of a white list to determine which websites can be accessed from internally, it will be necessary to add ALIX to this list to guarantee access to the software. Domain List If your ...How to Use the Operation Board
Summary The Operations Board is the ideal tool for monitoring operations. It allows you to see the cards in production, the cards on hold and the equipment occupied at a glance. Depending on your different roles and permissions, some elements ...How to Use the Production Release Panel of the Operation Board
Summary This article explains how to use the Production Release Panel in the Operation Boards. Depending on your different roles and permissions, this functionality may not be visible. How to send cards to production In the Operations tab, display ...How to change your ALIX subscription
Résumé To change the number of liscences available in ALIX, you need to change your montly subscription. To know know more about the differents subscriptions and costs, visit our website. To learn more about the different type of licenses and their ...