About Spam

Authoring allows users to send e-mails to invite respondents to participate in surveys, to send reminders and to thank them for their participation. However, sending an e-mail to a valid address is no guarantee that the message will be delivered. A Fact Sheet detailing different causes for non-delivery is available from Forsta's website. The information below is primarily addressed to Forsta’s SaaS clients, but the concepts presented herein also apply to On-Premise clients.

Minimizing Spam

To stop or minimize spam (unwanted commercial marketing e-mails), activities ranging from governmental regulations to local spam filters on the recipient computers are implemented.

For Forsta Plus users, three key areas are of particular relevance:

• Legislation - Government bodies in most countries have introduced laws regulating permitted ways of e-mailing. All users of Forsta's SaaS Environment are required to abide by Forsta's AUP, and by any laws and regulations applicable in any country in which they are operating. Clients operating on their own servers are recommended to follow similar guidelines.
• Spam Filters - Most spam filters (such as SpamCop) rely on “black-lists”. By subscribing to a spam filter, a company can automatically screen away all incoming e-mails where the sending server is included in a black-list. The usual reason for a sending server being black listed is because a certain number of e-mail recipients over a short period of time have reported the e-mail as spam. At Forsta we monitor black-lists continually, and have observed that recipients of survey invitations sometimes cause the Forsta e-mailing servers to be listed for short periods of time. It is therefore important that e-mails from Forsta are written such that they do not resemble spam, and that all recipients have agreed to accept e-mails.

Another triggering factor for e-mails being stopped in spam filters is when the sender address does not match the sender domain. This is the typical situation where a Forsta SaaS client sends e-mails from his own sender address (for example [e-mail]), while the sending server address is a Forsta domain. This is considered as e-mail spoofing, a technique used by spammers, and can cause mails to be blocked. The solution is to send e-mails from domains that are registered on the the servers. See below for further information regarding this solution. When sending e-mails and using correct domain names, Authoring may also support anti-spam solutions such as Sender ID and DomainKeys

• Compliance with Standards - E-mails should be sent in accordance with certain standards, and particularly relating to (1) e-mail format and (2) the technical setup.

Authoring addresses several of the issues relating to inconsistency between sender address and server domain. This is achieved by the introduction of the Activate sender domain/Email Delivery Report feature in Authoring.

Avoidance of “Spoofing” Status

When sending e-mails, an additional header is put on the SMTP message. This header includes the address of the sending server. If this header does not match the address specified in the “From” field, it is called "spoofing", and many mail relays will classify this as SPAM and block it. The Fixed Domain functionality forces the “From” address to be the same as the one in the SMTP header, and the possibility of e-mails being classified as SPAM is reduced.

If you are working in the SaaS environment, you will by default have either the “@us.confirmit.com” or the “@euro.confirmit.com” sender domain in the From field when you send emails. You can manually override this fixed sender domain by typing another sender domain into the Email, but you should be aware that in these cases 1) incomplete Email Delivery Reports will be generated, and 2) the emails are more likely to be interpreted as spam by recipient servers because the sender email domain will not match the sender server domain.

When using the default fixed sender domains “@us.confirmit.com” or “@euro.confirmit.com”, you can still receive feedback from respondents when they reply to your email. To recieve reply mails, you will have to specify a valid email address in the Reply to field.

Note that "Out of Office" replies will always be sent to the From address according to the emailing standard.

Note: Even if the Fixed Sender Domain/Email Delivery Report is activated, the Authoring user can still choose to use another “From” (sender) address. In this case a warning will be displayed in Authoring informing that this may cause the e-mails to be perceived as spam, and that the Email Delivery Report will be incomplete.