All Products
Search
Document Center

Direct Mail:Email Sending FAQs

Last Updated:Mar 13, 2024

This topic describes some common email sending FAQs.

What Kinds of Sending Methods Are Supported by Direct Mail?

You can send emails using the following three methods:

What Types of Email Can Be Sent by Direct Mail?

You can send triggered emails and batch emails by DirectMail.

  • Triggered emails: Emails that are triggered by events, such as registration notifications, transaction notifications, password retrieval, system alarms or other system notifications.

  • Batch emails: Subscription emails sent to members, such as product promotions, customer service emails or periodical news. Commercial emails as permitted by the recipients can be sent. The source of recipient addresses must be registered by the members, and the email content must be subscribed to by the recipients explicitly. Spam emails are not allowed.

Are Attachments Supported in Emails?

Attachments in emails are only supported when using SMTP. They are not supported by the DirectMail Console, API, or SDK. For more information about SMTP and attachments, please check How can I send emails with attachments using SMTP?

Why Is Port 25 of SMTP Service Unavailable?

Port 25 is currently disabled to maintain ECS security.

If your sending application is deployed on Alibaba Cloud ECS, we recommend that you use port 80 if SSL is unchecked, or port 465 if SSL is checked.

Why Is My Email Tagged as Spam?

Whether the mail goes into the recipient's junk box is determined by the recipient's anti-litter policy.

Spam Email Dealing Suggestion

Optimize the Content

1. You may try to adjust the email content to avoid using spam email expression.

2. Please avoid using short links when the content includes the website link.(It might be marked as spam email.)

3. Add the unsubscribe link address in the email content, and perform real unsubscribe. At the same time in an obvious place to remind the recipients to whitelist the sender's address or contact, and add your company and product introduction.

Warming-up

The flow control mechanism of each receiving system is different, has multiple dimensions, and is often adjusted, which is difficult to settle into the ability of the sending platform. Therefore, the sender needs to start from a suitable initial value, based on delivery errors or open rate, and gradually increase the number of messages.

Other Suggestions

If the recipients are from the same company, you may contact the mail admin of recipients to add sender address to the whitelist.

If the sender sends emails with the same subject to multiple recipients at the same time, the system may automatically identify them as spam. Do not frequently send emails with the same subject to multiple recipients. If your service needs it, please contact the recipients for adjustment.

Methods to Improve the Quality of Email Content

1. You can use this website to test your email before sending it. You may send your email content to the test account and check if it's considered spam, then follow the prompts to improve your email content.

Invalid Address Dealing Suggestion

The console classifies invalid addresses to facilitate users to remove them from the receipt list and reduce the generation of invalid addresses.

The procedure is as follows:

Open the Console---DirectMail---Reporting---Invalid Addresses in turn, export invalid addresses and clear them by customers.

The system will also automatically place addresses that have been judged as invalid addresses for multiple deliveries into the invalid address library. If the address is in the invalid address library when the user sends a email again, the email will be rejected. If it is confirmed that the address is valid, you can contact us to remove it from the invalid address library.

1. If you use the recipient list in Console, please delete invalid addresses and upload the recipient list again or edit the recipient list to delete invalid addresses.

2. If invalid addresses are members or registered users, please clear the invalid addresses first and add email verification in the registration process. For example, when the user is registered or triggered, the initial verification of whether the mailbox is valid: if the MX record is not found when the MX record is queried from the DNS server, the verification is invalid (in the case of normal network communication).

3. If the invalid address rate is too high and needs to apply for a quota increase or ban lift, the customer needs to clear the invalid addresses by himself first, and send the invalid address information to us in the form of attachment when submitting the work order for verification.

How to Choose the Sending Region?

1. Premise: Different regions determine the data landing region. If overseas customers are involved, please consult your company's legal affairs first to find out where the data is in compliance.

2. If your sending program is deployed in China, you are advised to select China(Hangzhou).

3. If your sending program is deployed outside of China and most of your receiving addresses are overseas, you are advised to use Singapore or Australia region.

4. If your sending program is deployed overseas, and most of your receiving addresses are in China.

a) If your sending program uses SMTP to send emails and is deployed in the United States or Singapore, it is recommended that you use China(Hangzhou) region, which will be automatically routed to China region node through accelerated nodes in the United States or Singapore.

b) In other cases, you are advised to use the Singapore region.

How to Check Sending Related Issues?

Please confirm which sending method the clients use and if there is any error return or exception information is displayed. Then follow the corresponding suggestion.

API

  • With error or exception returned;

1. Please check code provided by API for your reference.

  • Without error or exception returned;

1. Please confirm if the region you select is correct and the same as the region of DM. Is the AK correct?

2. Please check whether the values are provided in the document and are consistent with the values set on the Console. And please check whether the time zone of the server is consistent with that specified in the document.

3. Please confirm if the signature is correct, especially the replacement of special characters.

SDK

  • With error or exception returned;

1. Please check code provided by API for your reference.

  • Without error or exception returned;

1. Please confirm if the region you select is correct and the same as the region of DM. Is the AK correct?

2. Please check whether the values are provided in the document and are consistent with the values set on the Console.

SMTP

  • With error or exception returned;

1. Please check corresponding code.

  • Without error or exception returned;

1. Please confirm if the region you select is correct and the same as the region of DM. Is host the same as host in the region to which the DM belongs? Is the server Alibaba Cloud ECS? Is the port allowed by DM?

2. Please check whether the values are provided in the document and are consistent with the values set on the Console.

Other Methods

We do not provide technical support for the problems caused by sending messages other than official documents. If there is any problem, please solve it by yourself.

How to Check Email Content Related Issues?

Please confirm which sending method client uses at first, and then follow the corresponding suggestion.

API

Reference: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/directmail/latest/api-overview.

SingleSendMail can customize values and email content, and value replacement needs to be handled by the customer before calling the request. Reference: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/directmail/latest/singlesendmail.

BatchSendMail requires the template and sender list. You can use the values provided in the document, but custom values are not available. Reference: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/directmail/latest/batchsendmail.

SDK

Reference: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/directmail/latest/sdk-reference.

SingleSendMail can customize values and email content, and value replacement needs to be handled by the customer before calling the request. Please check reference in above API content.

BatchSendMail requires the template and sender list. You can use the values provided in the document, but custom values are not available. Please check reference in above API content.

SMTP

Reference: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/directmail/latest/smtp-service-address.

The values and email content can be customized, and the replacement of values needs to be handled by the customer before invoking the request.

DirectMail Console

Currently it supports sending batch emails but do not support triggered emails. And adding attachments is not supported. You need to select the uploaded recipient list, approved template, sending address, and type. Parameters provided in the document can be used in the template content, but user-defined values cannot be used. Reference: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/directmail/latest/send-emails-using-the-console.

Other Method

We do not provide technical support for the problems caused by sending messages other than official documents. If there is any problem, please solve it by yourself.