Is spam mail killing website authentication ?

Question

I have so much difficulty sending authentication mail to new user that I'm considering relying only on third party logging system like stackoverflow does.

The problem is that contrary to this site, my website is targeted to a not so tech-savy audience.

So two questions arise:

What are the solution to get a rock solid email delivery solution to stop losing new costumer and fix my system? (a lost around 50% of them as I write)

Would you just stop serving identification and rely solely on a third party service if your audience was not so tech-savy?

Answer 1

• Verify that your SMTP server isn't blacklisted.
• Make sure your verification mail contains one link and one link only.
• Rephrase.
• As a last resort, ask them to mail you. The only safe bet for this that I know of is by using a unique to-address in the mailto-link. Something like [email protected]

Answer 2

Perhaps you should start with finding out why your e-mails are lost or tagged as spam? If you're sending reasonable content from a properly configured, non-blacklisted mail-server, there is absolutely no reason for 50% of your mails to get lost.

Your best option is probably to send a mail to an account, which provides a detailed output from the spam check software and solve each of the issues or rules your mail is violating. If that's not possible, you should check if your mail server is blacklisted (as Jonas suggested), your server configuration (your mail server may HELO with an incorrect host name), the format of the mail message itself (your software may produce an incorrectly formatted message), the content of the message (is the wording similar to common spam or phishing mails) and if you are included unneccessary file attachments. Without more details, it is however not possible to be more specific.

Answer 3

If there were a "solution to get a rock solid email delivery" then the spammers would be using it.

If you could make your email "not look like spam" then so could the spammers.

Having said that, I believe that Sender Policy Framework (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender%5FPolicy%5FFramework) can make a difference.

Answer 4

Why are you losing so many potential customers?

Is it because they're not getting your email, or because they're not doing the right thing with it?

For users who are not tech-savvy, you need to make it very clear what they have to do. Check your emails; do they unambiguously say where they come from, what the user is to do, and what the user will get out of doing it? Check your validation page: does it clearly tell the user to check their email, and what will they find?

Have a friend who is tech-savvy try to sign up for your service, and report on his or her experiences. (If this is not the sort of thing you would do to a friend, then my strong suggestion is to retire from your business immediately and seek spiritual help for what you've done to others.) Try it on a friend who's not tech-savvy. Observe said friend attempt to create an account, without coaching that friend. You're likely to learn a lot.