Gmail is spamming our welcome email only

Question

Our web app sends a confirmation email when a person signs up. This message is getting in the spam folder in gmail only. All our other emails we send out are correctly received by the end user in their inbox. I have spent hours and hours looking into this and can't seem to even figure out if it the actual HTML code of the email or another issue. Can you help please?

Here is our HTML email:

    <html>
     <div style="width: 600px; background: #f2f2f2; padding-bottom: 25px; padding-top: 25px;">
      <div style="border: 1px solid #e0e9e8; width: 550px; background: #ffffff; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 25px;">
          <p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 18px; margin-left: 35px; margin-top: 15px;">Hi <?php echo $fname; ?>,</p>
          <p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; margin-left: 35px; margin-right: 30px; margin-top: 10px;">Your account has been created - now it is easier than ever to share with those who share your passion.</p>
          <p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; margin-left: 35px; margin-top: 15px;">Here are three ways for you to get started:</p>
          <p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 50px; margin-top: 10px;">- <a href="http://www.livthis.com">complete your profile</a></p>
          <p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 50px; margin-top: 10px;">- install the <a href="http://www.theliv.com/liv/staticpages/button">bookmarklet</a>.  It lets you add an item from any website with just one click.</p>
          <p style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 50px; margin-top: 10px;">- <a href="http://www.theliv.com/liv/wishlists/home/everyone">discover great items</a> by other members</p>
          <p style="font-family: arial; margin-left: 35px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-top: 25px;">Enjoy!<br>- The Liv Team</p>
      </div>
  </div>
</html>

Here is our text email:

Hi <?php echo $fname; ?>,
          Your account has been created - now it is easier than ever to share with those who share your passion.
          Here are three ways for you to get started:
          - complete your profile
          - install the bookmarklet. It lets you add an item from any website with just one click.
          - discover great items by other members
          Enjoy!- The Liv Team

Can anyone help please?

Go into one of the flagged-as-spam messages in Gmail. Click the down-arrow (by reply) and Show Original. Do you see any issues in there? — Farray, Apr 27 '11 at 16:29
I checked it out and I did have some differences. My Return-Path was different. My Received from was different. One email had www.theliv.com and the other had theliv.com. Could that be causing the issue? — Ryan Bennett, Apr 27 '11 at 18:07

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 27 '11 at 16:27

1

Check your message against this criteria. It seems like a good source:

http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-spam-filters-think

answered Apr 27 '11 at 16:27

Freesnöw

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That is a great article. Thank you for linking it to me. I checked it out and luckily I wasn't making any of those mistakes. I will check out some more stuff. Thanks – Ryan Bennett Apr 27 '11 at 18:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 27 '11 at 16:34

0

Looks like you're missing a <body> tag in your HTML email. Try running it through an HTML validator such as the W3C Validator.

answered Apr 27 '11 at 16:34

T Percival

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My HTML was not perfect but the error was made on all my emails and wasn't causing me to be in the spam folder. However, I did go back and clean up the HTML. Thanks. – Ryan Bennett Apr 27 '11 at 18:08

Gmail is spamming our welcome email only

2 Answers2