ADP CRM Email Delivery Issue

[sweece]

We've been having issues with emails that are sent from ADP CRM. Enough are are going directly to the customer's spam folder that it's become a noticeable trend. I know enough about email delivery to know that this could be an issue related to the server that it is sent from, which in this case belongs to ADP. I wonder if anyone else has had this issue or heard anything negative about ADP CRM for email delivery?

BTW, this is not related to our email provider. If I am sending an email from, say fakeemail@suss.net, the email actually gets sent from fakeemail_Suss_Buick_GMC@webcrmmail.adpcrm.net.

 

[Alex Snyder]

This is a potential issue with any Email Services Provider. Have you contacted ADP CRM Support? If so, what did they say?

 

[sweece]

"There's not really much we can do to stop that besides making sure you have your subject lines setup using words that are not listed as common buzz spam words"

They also checked my IP to see if it had been flagged but that wasn't the issue.

 

[Jennifer White]

If you are using buzz words, adding pictures in the body, or attachments it can cause your spam rating to be higher. Is it happening when you are sending single emails or bulk emails?

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Sounds like ADP isn't doing what they need to do to keep their email server white listed. This is an ongoing job and an ongoing issue with most CRM providers in our industry. It's rare a CRM vendor does what it takes to offer a true email marketing service to dealerships. They say they offer it but the truth is, most don't even know what it takes to get the job done.

One of the first questions out of my mouth when sitting through a CRM demo as they're touting their email marketing piece is to ask what servers will be sending out the emails and what measurements do they take to stay white listed. I usually feel better when tye tell me they outsource it to an email provider that know what they're doing.

 

[CliffC]

"There's not really much we can do to stop that besides making sure you have your subject lines setup using words that are not listed as common buzz spam words"

They also checked my IP to see if it had been flagged but that wasn't the issue.

Neither "@suss.net" (uses remote.suss.net) or "@webcrmmail.adpcrm.net" appear to have any issues at all with regard to the SPAM lists. I agree with Jennifer W, the next place to look is in the body of your emails for content and format characteristics that increase your spam score.

 

[mattwatson81]

These are some of the things that effect it, many of which you can't control:

1. Subject/email content
2. Volume of email sent (too much or too little is bad)
3. Amount of email sent to invalid email addresses (a huge no no)
4. Amount of emails flagged as spam by recipients (users don't like your emails)
5. Proper mail server config: SPF records, reverse DNS, domain keys, etc
6. HTML vs text emails. Simple HTML or text is preferred
7. etc...

If they send all types of email from one IP that could be the biggest issue. Someone who sends 100,000 emails for a newsletter and 20% of them are to bad email addresses, can quickly hurt the reputation of the IP sending email. Then when you try to email someone from the CRM it doesn't go through...

Email delivery is complicated to say the least.

 

[Jennifer Schrader]

I agree with Matt & Jennifer W. This has been an ongoing issue dealers have had for a while now. Email marketing has lost its impact as before it used to be a good marketing tool & still can if done properly.
The images, contact, bulk, invalid addresses & so on. Customers habits have changed and unfortunately getting spammed / trashed by their email is no fun.

 

[sweece]

Thanks for the replies everyone, gave me a chance to dig a little deeper.

Might have discovered the issue -- ADP sends all emails (single & bulk) as HTML by default. The only way to send plain text emails is to physically change it in EACH email. There is no way to set plain-text as default or make plain-text templates.

Also, every form of email communication (lead response, email marketing) is sent from the same server so this may be causing us to go directly to spam with some providers. We started using Mail Chimp for email marketing recently and our open rate drastically increased so maybe it's time to do the same for lead response.

 

[mattwatson81]

Also, every form of email communication (lead response, email marketing) is sent from the same server so this may be causing us to go directly to spam with some providers.

This could definitely be the problem. All dealers are probably also using the same mail server IP address. So if a lot of dealers are sending large email blasts, that hurts the reputation of the mail server IP and causes delivery problems for other emails, like personal CRM email replies, that would never be spam.