My website allows users to send a testimonial referral to their friends via email. These referrals are basically an invite to read a specific testimonial on our website, along with the user’s personal message. Some of my users really make use of this feature, often sending several different referrals to one specific recipient. These get queued in the database and are sent out every 30 minutes. Would an ISP who receives 6-8 emails from my site, all at once, consider them to be spam emails? If so, does anyone have a better idea on how I could go about sending referrals so as to not set off red flags?
I would doubt it. The volumes you described aren’t particularly high.
But just to clarify: Are you worried about the sending ISP (that is, your ISP) considering it spam? If so, the simplest solution would be to talk to them. If you explain the situation, they should be able to advise.
Or are you are referring to the recipient’s ISP? If so, that’s likely to be less of an issue, given that many recipients will be receiving the messages via POP-3 mailboxes, or perhaps webmail, so the ISP doesn’t enter the picture. But I can’t think that’s what you mean (correct me if I’m wrong).
To clarify, I’m concerned that if one of my users sends 6-9 referral emails to [noparse]user@aol.com[/noparse] that aol.com will blacklist my mail server’s IP address because they think I’m spamming.
My gut feeling is that 6 - 9 emails to one recipient won’t cause a problem. It’s not that high a number.
On the other hand, think of it from the recipient’s point of view. This person will receive 6 - 9 emails from the same sender, each one recommending a different testimonial from the same site. If I was the recipient, I’d find that irritating, to say the least. I’d probably be more annoyed with the person making the recommendatoin than I would be with the site, but it’s still something that you (the site operator) wouldn’t want.
Is there any way you can combine the recommendations into a single email? That would solve both problems.
If that’s difficult, then perhaps you should consider placing a limit on the number - not because of the risk of your IP address being blacklisted, but just as a courtesy to the recipients.