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I have just figured out that none of my guests with hotmail accounts are receiving emails from bookerville -- maybe hotmail has started the new year with a jacked up spam blocker? Or has it always been this way? Is there any way we can get maybe an smtp setting on the mail so it looks likes its coming from a person? from us? Is this a new problem or an old one? Is there a solution (other than asking the client for an alternate email!! :-))

 
20 Responses:

dhouin, January 11, 2015:

I am having the same trouble with MSN. I am having guest telling me they never received my information. I did a test to my MSN account and never received emails. I too am wondering what to do. This is not good.
HolidayGarda, January 11, 2015:

Also Outlook.com, I just discovered...probably part of the msn thing.
John Amato, January 12, 2015:

What email address did each of you use to register for Bookerville with?

John
John Amato, January 12, 2015:

And have you read this:

Email Spam and SPF Records
HolidayGarda, January 12, 2015:

Aha! Thank you! Will change to my domain email now and get the SPF added...
thank you for this!!
NallGearheard, January 13, 2015:

Curious to know if anyone else is still having problems with hotmail. I have a guest with a hotmail account who is not receiving emails (godaddy email). I added the SPF several weeks ago and just checked and it is still set up.
dhouin, January 15, 2015:

I registered my msn email address with bookerville, I am not even getting alerts from bookerville to my msn email account. I have reminders set up to come to me that I am not getting. So at this point in time there is nothing we can do except get our own Domain name? I didn't have this problem until recently.
NallGearheard, January 15, 2015:

I have an SPF record set up in my domain email account but that did not work for my guest who has a hotmail account. She never received any emails. I ran a test using a hotmail account I set up for myself and sent an email from my bookerville account. It was never received. After putting my domain email address in my hotmail contacts and running another test the email went thru just fine.
John Amato, January 15, 2015:

Interesting, and thank you Earl. Maybe this is what they (hotmail) require (in addition to the SPF records?) in order to allow 3rd-party email distribution.

Anyone else with a hotmail account want to try that and post the results?
John Amato, January 15, 2015:

I still think you're much better off with your own domain name, but if this works, then maybe you'll be ok with hotmail.

(For now...)
Pam Martin, January 22, 2015:

Hi John, hotmail users are not getting our Bookerville emails. We also have a spf record set up.
John Amato, January 23, 2015:

Hi Pam - are these emails having the From: address set to your domain (alabamavacationandrealty.com)?

And is this the domain you set the SPF records for?

Call me - let's look at this together...

John
Sabeli Villas.c.b. - E30811939, March 12, 2015:

John, This is not as easy as it sounds. I actioned all your suggestions, new e-mail address via domain and implemented an SPF record. However, because I signed up with one company when I purchased my Domain and then built my website with another company, to update the SPF record I have to revert back to the original management and then back again. This takes down my mail and website for at least 48-72 hours. All the time I am loosing business/enquiriers. And its still not working. I am waiting for some responses from my original Domain supplier and the Website supplier. As far as I can see the SPF record is still not in place. Any suggestions.
Gbelton, April 1, 2015:

Hotmail and yahoo addresses aren't receiving my BV emails
bgwelborn, July 6, 2015:

Add me to the list; if I see that a guest has a hotmail or msn address, I automatically ask for alternate email or just forward from my email. It's an utter pain.
John Amato, July 6, 2015:

Very sorry to hear. We just implemented something called Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which is supposed to be something that receiving email servers look for to authenticate the email. That was done Saturday (July 4).

bgweborn - indeed it is a pain in the neck, but educating consumers on the perils of using hotmail.com email addresses is a good public service. Hotmail's reputation for falsely flagging emails as spam is widely known (just go do a Google search on it).

Also - we strongly encourage all property managers to "white-list" bookerville.com in your email system. The more people who do this, the higher the successful delivery rates will be.

You can also tell your guests that they must white-list bookerville.com (and your own domain as well) - it all helps.

Here is a nice resource that explains what white-listing is, and how to do it for a dozen or two of the most popular email systems: how to white-list email
John Amato, July 6, 2015:

By the way: DKIM will not work unless the From: address is a bookerville.com email address. So in order to be compliant, we have recently changed all Bookerville-sent emails to have the From: address be service@bookerville.com, but with the Reply-To: set to your (the property manager's) email address.

We will be monitoring the results of this as carefully as we can over the next few weeks to see what the impact is.
Pam Martin, July 6, 2015:

This is working for us! Thank you John! Just got an email to a hotmail.com user!
bgwelborn, July 6, 2015:

Yes, thanks for the info and trying to get that fixed for us. I for one LOVE Bookerville!
John Amato, July 6, 2015:



Well, rest assured we are not taking this lightly, and we continue to research the issue to find ways we can improve deliver rates of emails sent from Bookerville.

Another thing has come to our attention: please review the emails you are sending to customers, and ensure that the content is easily recognizable as related to your vacation rental and the booking they made. We are experiencing some end consumers reporting emails that are sent to them as "spam" when in fact they are not spam. Make sure the email message body contains something that makes them understand that they are receiving this because of the booking they made through you.

This will minimize the number of reports from end consumers that Bookerville is sending spam, and thereby improve email deliverability.

 
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