...

Is it possible you could look into using the site interface to build a message platform so email through outside interfaces/sites/avenues is removed from the equation?

"We're getting a number of

Why would a spam filter block MRH  return email, considering all the other junk they let thru? ......DaveB

Contacting us

Yes, that's what the Contact us form on this site does, as well as what the article query and article submission forms do on this site. What you write / submit goes directly into a database and we can review that with a web browser. By the way, those pages include a phone number box that is required so we have an alternate contact route. No email involved. But not everyone uses our form pages.

We also get emails at times asking for a response. So we respond, and we then get more emails from the person pleading for an answer and asking how come we're not answering. So we keep trying to get through by sending email answers over and over -- and we only have an email, no phone number, so we're stuck.

Finally, when our attempts to respond via email keep being blocked, we often get an email that reads like this:

Aren't Computers wonderful????

Can't live without 'em, can't live with 'em.

Maybe the Matrix is winning.

Paul

Backup

We've even posted ...

I like the Prof's suggestion

Joe,

I think the Prof's suggestion could work. Using a Gmail, Yahoo! and a Hotmail account as a back stop to send an email to those whose email provider's spam filter keeps blocking the emails from mrhmag.com is a good one. I use Gmail and until I explicitly added your email blast addresses as a contact, those blasts would mostly end up in the spam folder. Even after telling Gmail 'that ain't spam' several times.

For Gmail a stupid little detail: I had to logon to the Google Gmail website to add your contact since my Gmail app on my Android phone wouldn't allow me to this. So another hurdle for people that don't know much about computers. Then again, I have Google account integration turned off on my Android phone because I want control over what is sent to Google, so likely why I couldn't do it from the app.

My experience is that many many many people unfortunately have no clue how their email client (or computer, or phone)works. They know just the absolute bare minimum to be able to send and receive an email. If it doesn't end up in their inbox, they simply will not see it. Hence why I loathe a lot of those smart features as 'promotion' 'social' auto categorization that automatically get turned on and filter stuff from your inbox. It causes emails to disappear from the regular inbox and people just don't know how to find them anymore. If anyone knows how to go from their Inbox to their draft or spam folder, you likely know more than 99% of email users. It's sad.

If people use the newer Outlook (O365) it's even worse with their Junk folder. Even though I turned it off, my company (seemingly) has an overriding feature turned on, so stuff still ends up being delivered in the Junk folder even though the Outlook client itself states the Junk feature is turned off. Try explaining that to people...

This sounds like...

... and excellent topic to include in an upcoming Publisher's Welcome. 

What???

did I read that correctly?

People send in article inquiries and don't include an email address and/or phone number? 

Marty

The PRR paint color article proposal has been moved ...

The PRR paint color article proposal was extremely off-topic in this thread so it has been moved to its own thread ...

mrhmag.com/node/37730

Thoughts

The way I read the problem is people send an email without any other contact information, phone number, postal address, maybe a secondary email. When MRH tries to respond the receivers email spam filter just sends the MRH response to the bit-bucket and may send back a message to MRH saying it was not received because it was considered spam.

Although as Yaron mentioned it is possible that people don't know how to check their spam/junk email folder for a response or alternatively don't think to check it as it is only spam, why would I wan't to look in there for a response from MRH?

I don't think creating a MRH sending address in gmail will increase the chances that a spam filter will let the message be received unless the mrhmag.com (or its IP address) has been blacklisted. Some spam filters check the entire message to determine if it is spam, not just block email based on the domain it was sent from. Although if mrhmag.com has been blacklisted somewhere and that person is using that spam address database using a different email address could help.

Joe, according to this site;  http://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/mrhmag.com.html you are neutrallisted at one place, not sure what that means, the article I used to find that is:  https://www.pinpointe.com/blog/how-do-i-know-if-im-on-a-spam-blacklist, a couple sites want your mail server IP to check. One site even lets you check sending email to a particular user:  https://tools.dnsstuff.com/, scroll to the bottom of that page.

Spam filtering

Spam filtering is more nuanced than you might think - there are a lot of factors that most spam filters consider including content of message, but also the volume of emails sent, wether anyone has reported similar messages as spam, what the bounce rate of the sender is, etc.  And those factors may be weighted differently for individual customers of the spam filter depending on settings, etc.

In the case of MRH, sending the regular email blasts from the same domain as you use for sending more critical emails may be a part of the problem, since I’d bet there are people who mark the regular weekly emails as spam.  And with the regular email blasts you probably get a number of bounces from email addresses that are no longer in service.  Using a different domain for the critical emails might help keep your sender reputation up so those emails are less likely to get put in spam folders.

We try different source domains for the from email already

One of the first things we do when we can't get through is send email from a different domain. I even sometimes send emails with my personal email when I get really desperate.

Some folks have their anti-spam up so high you can't get through except if they white list you. The trouble is, those same folks often are not even aware they need to do anything to allow us to get past their email defenses.

Monday morning quarterbacking

Should have figured you’d have already been through all the steps trying to find ways to get through Joe.

Not just MRH

This not strictly an MRH or a model railroad hobby problem.  Communicating with many potential authors can be a problem until the would-be author understands the importance of following whatever routine the publisher uses.

For those who moan that the same authors are published over and over, this is part of the reason. The authors understand and fulfill the publishers' desires.

...

I have just considered another option that may get past Spam Filters.

You're using commercial addresses with commercial names in them.  You might try using a personal email address set up for this purpose for correspondence and put as little commercial content in those emails as possible so that they appear as personal emails and not business emails when they reach the recipients.

I have a gray filter on my servers.

What is a gray filter you ask?  Well it works like this.  Whenever it gets a message it says "Huh, I did not quite get that, can you resend it.  A legitimate  sending server will do so real fast.  The gray list says thank you and sends the message to my inbox.  No second response and it goes in the trash.

This gets alot of reply servers and authentication routines.  If it takes forever I just click < send again> a couple times.  Then use the last code sent etc.  Some people probably do not understand this process or others as mentioned above

And Vice Versa

When MRH sends an author an e-mail, it might be handy if you put contact e-mail addresses on your e-mails.

re: And Vice Versa

If the author is not getting the reply e-mail from MRH it does no good to add a contact address in the e-mail.