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AOLHow to Address Deliverability Problems with AOLThe best way to help ensure deliverability in to AOL is to follow the guidelines required by AOL for whitelisting. These include: E-mail Formatting Requirements: Email originating from the whitelisted IP Address must be compliant with the federal Can Spam Act of 2003, available at http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/can-spam.shtml. Persons transmitting mail from the whitelisted IP Address must not do anything that tries to hide, forge or misrepresent the sender of the e-mail and sending site of the e-mail. Bulk mailings must specifically state how the AOL members' e-mail addresses were obtained and must indicate the frequency of the mailing. Such details as the date and time when the e-mail address was obtained along with the IP address of the subscriber and the web site they visited to sign-up must be made available to AOL upon request. Bulk mailings should contain simple and obvious unsubscribe mechanisms. We recommend that this be in the form of a working link to a one-click unsubscribe system; however, a valid "reply to:" address may be used instead. All subscription based e-mail must have valid, non-electronic, contact information for the sending organization in the text of each e-mail including phone number and a physical mailing address. Policy and Procedural Requirements: All bulk e-mail to AOL members must be solicited, meaning that the sender has an existing and provable relationship with the e-mail recipient and the recipient has not requested not to receive future mailings from the sender. Documentation of the relationship between the sender and the recipient must be made available to AOL upon request. Any e-mail sent to AOL members must conform to AOL's Community Guidelines (http://legal.web.aol.com/aol/ aolpol/comguide.html). Persons sending bulk mail from the whitelisted IP Address must immediately remove any e-mail address which causes a permanent failure "bounce" message to be generated. If a whitelisted IP Address generates member complaints, bounces in excess of 10% of their mail or fails to accept those bounces, the whitelist status may be revoked for that IP Address. A pattern of such abuses common to a single organization may result in the revocation of whitelist status for some or all of that organization's IP Addresses. In no way does the posting of these requirements imply any affiliation, membership, sponsorship or endorsement of business or activities/practices of an organization by AOL. Periodic audits of mail, complaint, bounce and bounce acceptance volumes may result in removal of an IP Address or of an organization’s IP Addresses from AOL's whitelist without notice. If you meet all of these requirements, you can (and should) apply for whitelisting with AOL. You can apply here: |