How postmasters of different mail services work. Inbox Delivery Tools: DKIM, SPF, Deliverability Checker, Postmaster

The topic this topic is dedicated to is specific by definition – mailings. However, we are sure that some hackers sometimes use this type of communication. How to make it effective for you and painless for the recipients is written below.

Users often consider mailings to which they once personally subscribed to be spam, but formally this is not entirely true. But, of course, mailbox owners have no time for terminological subtleties - and, as a rule, they call any unwanted letters spam.

The purpose of the Postmaster.mail.ru service, which this article is devoted to, is to help web projects control the flow of electronic correspondence sent to mailboxes users.

Since the publication of the new service for senders mass mailings, postmaster.mail.ru, we have received dozens of reviews and suggestions.

During this time, several thousand Internet projects joined the service (including very large ones - such as Groupon, for example). We take into account your wishes and will try to implement them all.

Over the past period, quite a lot of changes have occurred in the service:

The “Letters” section has appeared. In it you can see detailed statistics on different types letters.
IN detailed statistics new counters have appeared for a domain or for a specific letter (number open letters, the number of deleted open emails and the number of emails that were deleted unopened).
The interface has been partially redesigned.
The accuracy of statistics collection has increased.

Separate statistics by email type

In the new “Letters” section you can view detailed statistics for each type of letter. For example, you can view both statistics on user registration letters and, independently of this, statistics on password recovery letters.

To start using this new opportunity, you need to add a special header to each letter: X-Mailru-Msgtype. The value can be used random dial English letters and numbers up to 32 characters long. The header value will be used to group messages of the same type.

New statistics

It is also now possible to view statistics on letters, open by users. This unique information, since it is impossible to find out these numbers in any other way (and, as far as we know, no mail in the world yet gives senders the opportunity to find out such numbers). On the “Details” page for the selected domain or email you can see:

Number of open emails for the selected period (per this moment this is a simple counter of non-unique discoveries, i.e. If a user opens the same email 10 times in a day, then 10 will be added to the counter).
Quantity deleted emails, which were not opened. By this indicator you can judge how interesting the letters are to the audience.
Number of emails that were deleted after opening.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this statistic collected for the current day, i.e. if you sent, for example, 100 letters yesterday, and not a single one today, then the statistics for today on openings and deletions will not be zero, because users do not read your letters instantly, but with some delay.

All this, we hope, will help mailing list senders analyze the flow of letters more carefully and adjust it accordingly. better side, focusing on user reaction.

Our immediate plans include the implementation of FBL technology (although this does not directly apply to the postmaster service), as well as - special API to access postmaster data.

We will be happy to read your feedback about working with postmaster.mail.ru in the comments or in a letter to [email protected].

Vasily Bespalov,
Head of Antispam Mail.Ru Mail.

You can make a useful newsletter with good text, beautiful design and high-quality layout, and then see that two and a half people read it (you are among them). And all because your letters ended up in spam and did not reach the final recipient. You must not only be able to make mailings, but also deliver them. This cannot be done effectively without high-quality analytics.

Postmasters is a tool for analytics of your mailing list, which is available in all the most popular email providers: gmail, mail.ru, yandex, hotmail, yahoo, aol. They help you find out your spam rating, IP and domain reputation, delivery errors, and improve your mailing deliverability based on these indicators. Whatever postmasters we are talking about, for them to work, DKIM (Domain keys identified mails) and SPF (Sender Policy Framework) must be configured - these settings are needed to identify and authenticate the sender. Without these settings, postmasters will work, but not completely; mainly, the FeedBack Loop function, with which you can find out how a subscriber interacts with the letter, will not be available.

Almost every major mail service has its own postmasters. Each has its own, that is, after setting up the postmaster on mail.ru, it will not work on Yandex or Google. There you will need to configure your postmasters. They all differ in interface and slightly in functionality. Set up postmasters for the services you send to. significant amount letters.

Feedback loop - a function thanks to which we will receive a report on who clicked the spam button, and thanks to this we will be able to guess why (for example, looking at the history of his interaction with the mailing list). And this information can already be used to adjust the mailing list and reduce getting into spam. By default the feedback loop is disabled, it needs to be configured.

Delivery Errors Dashboard feature displays delivery errors. There are many reasons for these errors: bad reputation IP or domain; attachments that gmail does not support; spam content; DMARK check failed. And this is not the whole list. In the report you can see detailed information on each error; just click on it. Encryption Dashboard shows the ratio of the total number of letters to letters with TLS (Transport Layer Security) code. Letters with this protocol are protected from unauthorized access.

There are companies that send mailings to a database foreign addresses. Your clients from New York have heard something about Yandex, but know nothing at all about mail.ru, but they themselves use mail from Yahoo. We will now consider this postmaster.

Yahoo

Go to Postmaster, click New Sender Application, fill out the form. We are now registered as a new sender. After that, click Feedback Loop Application and also fill out the form. This is how we apply to connect the Feedback Loop. After this we receive a mailbox [email protected](on your domain), where reports on the work of the mailing list in yahoo mail will be sent. From them you will find out how many times your mailing was marked as spam. Separately worth noting feedback that this service provides. All communication takes place on English language, but users actually get questions answered. There is a forum where you can ask a question. The forum is live, it is quite possible to get an answer to your question.

AOL - American Online

AOL (American OnLine) has had its own since 2004 mail client. Today the company owns such brands as Moviefonet, Engadget, TechCrunch, MAKERS, and Stylelist. AOL has a postmaster, which we will look at. Here more features, and the menu is more friendly than in Yahoo.

The AOL postmaster has his own blog where he publishes last news and changes in the operation of the service.

We go to the postmaster, we see three menu items: popular links, tools and technical assistance, reference information.

In chapter popular Links Can:

view error codes;
add your IP list to White list(does not work if it is already blacklisted);
apply to connect FeedBack Loop;
create a bug report. There are several types of errors in the menu, which give a short description of them, and what needs to be done before writing about the problem. When you click the create button (error name) ticket, a convenient form opens for filling out information;
AOL mail servers. Changes to your mail servers are displayed here.

In chapter Tools & Technical help Can:

check IP reputation;
verify the IP connection. You should go through this verification if you are not sure whether your emails pass through firewalls and proxy servers or not.
Read the instructions for passing the Telnet test. It is needed to manually configure mailing list via Telnet.

AOL's Postmaster interface is much more user friendly than Yahoo's. The service has existed since 2004 and has been actively developing since then. In 2012 they updated the design and recently added integration with Outlook Express. If you work with mailing lists in the Western market, we recommend setting up a postmaster from AOL.

All of these postmasters are largely similar in function or settings requirements, but some stand out from their competitors.

When Google launched its postmaster a year ago, it did not have full functionality like it does now. Much was added that same fall. Now we see that the yahoo postmaster is a bare FeedBack Loop - almost no one does this anymore. It is logical to expect changes in the functionality of this postmaster. If they are significant, we will definitely report about it on our blog.

Set up your postmasters and welcome to your inbox!

To reduce the likelihood of your mailings ending up as spam and to find out about any difficulties in time, take care of your connection

Service for checking deliverability;
- Postmaster Mail.ru;
- Yandex Post Office;
- DKIM;
- SPF.

If you can’t figure it out yourself, we can help.

Deliverability check

To find out in time whether your emails are classified as spam, use a service to check email deliverability. The national Email Stream has it - it is enough for minimal control.

It works like this. After registration you receive a list of test emails in different postal systems and add these addresses to your list of subscribers. The system physically checks whether letters have entered the mailboxes different services and reports problems.

Deliverability Monitoring

Postmaster Mail.Ru

The leading postal services in Russia took care of the mailers and did for us special services: Postmaster Mail.ru and Yandex Post Office.

After confirming the domain in the Mail.ru postmaster, you see general statistics your mailings by date: how many letters were delivered to mail.ru addresses, how many were read, how many were marked as spam and deleted. How many letters were sent by the service to the Spam folder, and how many were not accepted by Mail.Ru servers at all.

To collect statistics in Postmaster, your mailings must contain DKIM signatures and SPF records.

In the “Letters” section you can see detailed statistics for each type of letter. To do this, you will need to add a special header to each letter.

An important parameter is Reputation. In mail.ru statistics this is average percentage complaints in the last 30 days. The smaller the value, the better.

Yandex post office

Post office is a Yandex tool for checking the effectiveness of mailings sent to @yandex.ru addresses. Statistics are available in the Post Office on dates, sender addresses, and the subject of the letter.

Using the List-id service header, you can obtain statistics on groups of letters.

Setting up DKIM

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is used for anti-phishing and anti-spam. To identify the sender of a message, DKIM adds a digital signature associated with the organization's domain name. The signature is automatically verified on the recipient's side.

To put it simply, DKIM verifies the identity of the sender using digital signature - hidden code, which is added to service headers letters. DKIM confirms that the email was sent from an address on the specified domain.

Sender Policy Framework, SPF - extension for the sending protocol Email via SMTP. Thanks to SPF, you can check whether the sender's domain is forged - the domain owner specifies a list of servers that have the right to send email messages with return addresses in this domain in a TXT record corresponding to the domain name.

For example, v=spf1 include:spf.unisender.com ~all

The receiving party checks the SPF record with the sender’s data and marks the letter:

Result of checking	Explanation	Free translation	What happens to the letter
Pass	The SPF record designs the host to be allowed to send	In the SPF record the sender is listed as allowed	accepted
Fail	The SPF record has designated the host as NOT being allowed to send	Sender not allowed by SPF record	rejected
SoftFail	The SPF record has designated the host as NOT being allowed to send but is in transition	Intermediate result: sender not directly allowed, but possible	accepted with further verification
Neutral	The SPF record specifies explicitly that nothing can be said about validity	The SPF data is not clear enough to make a decision	accepted
None	The domain does not have an SPF record or the SPF record does not evaluate to a result	There is no record or it has no value for the decision	accepted
PermError	A permanent error has occurred (eg. badly formatted SPF record)	Permanent error. For example, crooked SPF formatting	not defined
TempError	A transient error has occurred	Temporary error	not defined

No matter how comical it may sound, the most important thing in communicating with a client is that the communication takes place. The information noise is intensifying every day: we no longer notice banners on websites and advertising on the street, we scroll through SMS messages and cannot stand calls offering a new super promotion. But mail is a channel that we never stop using, whether we want it or not, looking through at least the subject lines of letters every day. Even the brightest headlines, thoughtful, memorable design and high-quality sales text will not bring you sales if the letters do not end up in your inbox.

Mail services such as Gmail, Mail.ru or Yandex carefully ensure that their clients receive less unwanted emails. How formidable spam filters work, and how send an email newsletter so as not to fall into their traps?
Exists whole line factors due to which your messages may not reach the recipient:

Use double confirmation(double-opt-in) upon subscription. This will allow you to collect a base of existing, available and interested subscribers. With this method of subscription, if questions arise about the legitimacy of the newsletter, you can always easily provide evidence to mail services ( general provisions of Mail.ru).
Use mailvalidator.ru - paid service for check email addresses. With its help, you will clear the list of non-existent and duplicate addresses, as well as spam traps. The algorithm does not check 100%, and with corporate addresses It may not filter out everything, but there is nothing better for checking the database now.
Confirm your rights to the domain ( ) and constantly use a postmaster to track your audience's reaction to your emails.

Setting up Postmaster Mail.ru

With the help of Postmaster Mail.ru, you can control the reach of letters to Mail.ru mailboxes (@mail.ru, @inbox.ru, @list.ru, @bk.ru), collect user complaints about the mailing list (FBL), and also monitor ESP platform through which the newsletter is sent.

Instructions for setting up Postmaster Mail.ru
1. Go to the Postmaster Mail.ru page( https://postmaster.mail.ru/ ) and log in using your email login and password on Mail.ru.

3. On next step You must specify the domain name and click the “Add domain” button.

4. After adding a domain, you must confirm domain ownership. This can be done in three ways: place an HTML file, specify a Meta tag, or go through a DNS check.

5. In the best way confirmation of the right to manage a domain is a DNS check. To do this, you need to go to the “DNS check” tab and copy the value of the DNS record. The DNS record value must be placed in the domain DNS records using the interface of the hosting provider or domain name registrar.
After adding an entry in the hosting provider’s interface, you must return to the Postmaster Mail.ru page and click on the “Confirm” button.

6. After successful confirmation, the domain name will appear in the Postmaster Mail.ru interface.

7. After sending mailings, Postmater Mail.ru will display statistics on the number of letters sent and their status: “Delivered”, “Possibly spam”, “Definitely spam”.

Setting up Postmaster Tools by Gmail

Postmaster Tools by Gmail is a tool similar to Postmaster Mail.ru, but is responsible for monitoring the deliverability of letters to Gmail.com (@gmail.com or @googlemail.com).

Instructions for setting up Postmaster Tools by Gmail

Go to the Postmaster Mail.ru page ( https://gmail.com/postmaster/ ) and log in using your email login and password on Gmail.com.

3. In the form that appears, you must provide a link to your domain and click the “Next” button.

4. On this step Domain ownership must be verified. To do this, you need to copy the DNS record value. The DNS record value must be placed in the domain DNS records using the interface of the hosting provider or domain name registrar.
After adding an entry in the hosting provider’s interface, you must return to the Postmaster Tools by Gmail page and click on the “Confirm” button.

5. After successfully confirming the rights to the domain, it will appear in the Postmaster Tools by Gmail interface with the status “Confirmed”.

6. After connecting Postmaster Tools by Gmail to the domain, you can track: the share of spam hits, IP reputation, domain reputation, etc.

Setting up "Yandex Post Office"

“Yandex Post Office” is an email marketing tool that monitors the effectiveness of mailings sent to Yandex mailboxes (@yandex.ru, @ya.ru, @narod.ru, etc.).

Instructions for setting up Yandex Post Office

1. Go to the “Yandex Post Office” page ( postmaster.yandex.ru ) and log in using your Yandex email username and password or using account in social networks.

2. In the form that appears, you must provide a link to your domain and click the “Add” button.

3. After adding, you must confirm domain ownership rights. To do this, you need to create “ Text Document"(notepad) and copy the proposed code "by Yandex Post Office" into it (second line). Next you need to save text file with a name suggested by “Yandex Post Office” (first line). When saving the file, make sure the extension is html file, not txt. Afterwards, the file must be uploaded to the root directory of the site via an FTP client.

4. After successful confirmation, the domain name will appear in the “My Domains” section of the “Post Office” interface.

5. In order to find out the statistics on the delivery rate of letters to Yandex mailboxes, you need to click on the domain name. And to get more detailed report, you must click on the subject of the letter.