Oct
29th

Whitelisting with Yahoo!

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This morning I located a bulk email application form for Yahoo! It doesn’t appear as robust as the program that the AOL postmasters have put up for applying to their Whitelist but I’m glad to finally find one!

Yahoo! Mail

Some recommendations before you apply:

  1. Be sure you have reverse DNS lookup enabled on the IP Address you’re sending from. Let Yahoo! know the IP Address that you’ll be sending from in the submission form (in the additional area).
  2. Be sure you have a feedback loop for the ISP to reply to messages that have issues (e.g. abuse@yourcompany.com) and set an email header for “Errors-To:” at this email address. Let Yahoo! know your feedback loop email address in the submission form (in the additional info area).
  3. Be sure to add your full company address, city, state, zip, phone number and fax number in the additional info area as well.

If you’re sending out high volumes of emails, I’d highly recommend you get on the whitelist of Yahoo! and AOL. A whitelist does not guarantee that you make the inbox, the content can still get you in a spam filter. A whitelist won’t stop you from getting blocked, either, but it will give you a little more insurance that that won’t happen.

The best defense from not getting blacklisted is to remove bounced email addresses from your list, always gain permission, and always send the email in a timely manner - corresponding with when you asked permission. I’m not a deliverability consultant - but I have a good friend who is and helps keep me straight on this stuff!

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3 Comments »

Comment by Cheezus
2007-11-26 23:24:27

Good luck, you are going to need it. Most people never hear anything back regarding their requests. Me personally have submitted applications for all different organizations, for over a year, with not a single response. Apparently this is normal business practices for Yahoo. We follow all industry best practices and even sign all outgoing emails with DK and DKIM…still no success. Be sure to post back if you get accepted!!
 
Comment by Melina
2008-02-12 03:40:43

It’s great when I tried it late last year I had a reply from Yahoo and subsequently got it whitelisted.

However, as there are changes with the IP address, I tried my luck again and it did not seem to work. The form has also been taken off!

:( MM

 
2008-07-18 16:57:42

[...] the major Internet Service Providers. I’ve previously written about whitelisting with AOL and Yahoo! Today we found out that there may be an issue where our site may be being blocked by Comcast. [...]
 
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