Best Practices for Sending Email
We follow key internal processes to protect the integrity of our hosted mail domains. In addition, we promote and enforce high standards of behavior among our customers who share resources in our multi-tenant hosting environment.
As an administrator, it is equally important to align your processes with the best practices described here to minimize the risk of interference with your email communication. Many external factors can impact the deliverability of email. Due to the vast amount of spam transmitted to consumers each day and the aggressive systems used to combat it, legitimate business emails are sometimes filtered without notice. In addition, customers who do not recognize the sender or contents of a valid message may regard it as spam, putting organizations at risk of having their addresses blocked by ISPs or email reputation management services.
Implement authentication—Organizations that send messages from branded domains should use a form of authentication to protect their reputations and delivery rates, while guarding against phishing scams and forged messages.
- Sender Policy Framework—Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication option that designates permitted senders of email originating from your domain, excluding those with mismatched or incorrectly specified SPF records. If your email address was supplied by Oracle using custhelp.com or rnmk.com domains, SPF has been implemented for you and no further action is needed. Otherwise, see Answer ID 2489 on our support site for information about implementing SPF on your site.
- DomainKeys/DomainKeys Identified Mail—DomainKeys (DK) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) are email authentication options that use cryptographic signatures to designate email as originating from an authorized email delivery provider, excluding messages sent from those with unsigned or incorrectly assigned signatures. If we supplied your email address using custhelp.com or rnmk.com domains, your emails are already signed by B2C Service and no further action is needed. Otherwise, see Answer ID 2701 on our support site for information about implementing DK and DKIM on your site.
Include your address and privacy policy—Edit your mail footers to include your business address and a link to your privacy policy. All emails governed by the CAN-SPAM law must contain the physical address or post office box of your organization. In addition, a link to your organization’s privacy policy explaining how profile information is used can build trust with your contacts. For information about editing your mail footers, see How the Message Templates Editor Works and How You Customize the Global Template.
Review invalid email addresses—Use reports to regularly monitor all contacts marked as invalid. A high percentage of invalid addresses indicates a need to reevaluate your contact record maintenance practices. In addition, the Invalid Email Address Domains report helps you check for contact email addresses from well-known domains that contain common typographical errors, such as “htomail.com” instead of “hotmail.com”. For information about creating and using reports, see Overview of Creating Basic Custom Reports.
Send from familiar addresses—Use easily identifiable email addresses in your mailbox configuration to help recipients recognize your organization as the sender. Do not include special or non-alphanumeric characters, as they can cause filters to falsely identify the email as spam.
Refine the message subject—The subject line is the first part of your message that your contacts see, so it must be concise and informative. When responding to an incident, make sure the subject clearly states the topic being discussed. If a contact fails to enter a descriptive and accurate subject, consider modifying it for clarity.
Promote addition to address books—Ask contacts to add your email address to their address books. This reaffirms their interest and ensures consistent delivery of your messages to their inbox.
Avoid using content associated with spam—Do not use all caps, special characters, or certain words often associated with spam in incident responses, as these can register false positives in many spam filters.
Honor abuse complaints—Regularly monitor administration accounts, such as abuse@yourdomain.com or postmaster@yourdomain.com, and honor all abuse complaints as unsubscribe requests by opting out or disabling the associated contact record.