Ok, so I hope that last post went through. I assume there might be a short
delay before it is posted.
So to try and give some background information, and how things came to be, I
will answer Andrew's question, who asked if I am a spammer. We are a small
family runned company that wholesales Polish decorative wooden products and
accessories. We have a list of about 3,000 e-mails that we have been sending
mail(information, news, specials, promotions, etc) to for the past few years.
Being in charge of sending mail, I was not satisfied with the primitive e-mail
software (Handy Mailer) we were using. It did not have an e-mail database what
so ever, and no way of automatically handling unsubscribers. Updating the list
with new customer e-mails was a huge pain, and unsubscribers had to be
painfully removed by hand. In addition, I believe this software spammed
through our Outlook client, which left it in a state of devastation the next
morning after sending a campaign.
So, as a result I began to look through a multitude of email softwares, and
came to the conclusion that a self-hosted version of Active Camapaign's Email
Marketing Software was the best choice. However, due to our server being at
least 10 years old, and running on W2K, installing this software directly on
our host machine was incredibly difficult. I had managed to get it running,
however it was painfully slow and there were various errors. So following the
suggestion of AC's technical support, I decided to host this mail software
with Hostgator, as a subdomain (marketing.enchantedboxes.com) of
www.enchantedboxes.com.
After sending 2 campaigns, it was clear that there were severe issues with
deliverability. And thus I began researching the matter and came upon the
conclusion of trying to incorporate an SPF record.
So now my next question, as it seems that I have sucessfully(?) added the SPF
record to my domain, is how would I know go about adding the subdomain to the
working SPF record. The header for an e-mail sent from the subdomain is
substantially longer, and has many more entries.
I do not know if this is a good comparison, but I will post the headers from a
test email sent to out Outlook account from our Outlook account, and from the
subdomain's marketing software to the same Outlook account:
Outlook>Outlook:
Received: from EWBPC ([65.96.162.50])
by mail.enchantedboxes.com (Merak 5.3.3) with SMTP id AAA37674
for <misiu@enchantedboxes.com>; Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:32:07 -0400
From: "Admin" <admin@enchantedboxes.com>
To: <misiu@enchantedboxes.com>
Subject: test
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:58:28 -0400
Message-ID: <8A74165EBFCC4511BA904616DE266EA1@EWBPC>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0588_01CB71F1.344204F0"
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.1.7600.16543
Thread-Index: ActyErn63m+SdhJAQ3+IKQ+3yujCYQ==
********************
Subdomain marketing software>Outlook:
Received: from gateway08.websitewelcome.com ([67.18.81.18])
by etherstreet.com (Merak 5.3.3) with SMTP id AAA37674
for <misiu@enchantedboxes.com>; Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:01:10 -0400
Received: (qmail 22545 invoked from network); 18 Oct 2010 21:27:07 -0000
Received: from gator1197.hostgator.com (174.122.2.194)
by gateway08.websitewelcome.com with SMTP; 18 Oct 2010 21:27:07 -0000
Received: from misiu by gator1197.hostgator.com with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <bounced@enchantedboxes.com>)
id 1P7xEV-0000wI-WE
for misiu@enchantedboxes.com; Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:27:04 -0500
To: misiu@enchantedboxes.com
Subject: October Wooden Box Sale from EWB
X-PHP-Script: marketing.enchantedboxes.com/12all/admin/api.php for 65.96.162.50
From: Enchanted World of Boxes <service@enchantedboxes.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:27:03 -0500
X-LibVersion: 3.3.2_4
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="_=_swift-1778746094cbcbba7f09ef6.29421406_=_"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced by SwiftMailer 3.3.2_4
X-mid: bWlzaXVAZW5jaGFudGVkYm94ZXMuY29tICwgYzAgLCBtLTE=
X-Mailer: ACEM
User-Agent: ACEM
X-Sender: <service@enchantedboxes.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <
http://marketing.enchantedboxes.com/12all/box.php? nl=7&c=0&m=-1&s=eb8be315070c4cb0fbd70ea02ef462a6&funcml=unsub2>
Message-ID: <20101018212703.3587.151083156.swift@marketing.enchantedboxes.com>
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any
abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - gator1197.hostgator.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - enchantedboxes.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [855 853] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - enchantedboxes.com
********************
Now the first thing that really confuses me with the subdomain's header, is
HostGators dns server, websitewelcome.com. I say this because if I examine two
headers from two different tests of the same e-mail I sent to myself, the
header information recieved is different.
Looking at this line:
Received: from gateway08.websitewelcome.com ([67.18.81.18])
The gateway08 changes, it could be gateway12, or gateway01, and possibly every
other combination of number. Same with the ip, the first four sets of numbers
seem to stay consistant, by the ending digits change, where .18 may
be .4, .56, or something else.
So I am confused as to how I would go about adding this to the SPF record,
assuming it is required. Could I simply just add the
domain "gator1197.hostgator.com", or its corresponding IP, "174.122.2.194"?
I am beginning to lose my train of thought as I've essentially confused myself
writing these two posts. Alan, thank you for this link:
http://www.alandoherty.net/info/mailservers/ I will try to follow it and add to it. I began reading it, and it is why I
asked about the DNS Lookup in the Merak Mail Server options. One final
question, once I finish a completed SPF record, would it be easy to convert it
into a Sender ID record? They seem relatively similar aside from the beginning
entry, from what little I know.
Thanks again everybody!
Michael
-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework:
http://www.openspf.org [
http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription:
http://www.listbox.com/member/ [
http://www.listbox.com/member/]
Archives:
https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/1020/=now RSS Feed:
https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/1020/1311530-08394398 Modify Your Subscription:
https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=1311530&id_secret=1311530-644bccd5 Unsubscribe Now:
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=1311530&id_secret=1311530-512c0f9e&post_id=20101022172407:B304EFE4-DE22-11DF-BF04-2EDE4A3287EA Powered by Listbox:
http://www.listbox.com