Screwed up email 'FROM' addressing COMPLAINT

Report · May 26, 2013

Yes this is a complaint. Seriously what is going on with the FROM email addressing and how did anyone in BC ever think that deliberately changing and screwing with a clients FROM details improves things for clients.

This is now what happens to one of my clients because he does not host his DNS with BC. His 'from' addressing is changed. All his clients now get this for campaigns and notifications. I have substituted his name for 'ClientName' and website name for BusinessName (as I do not think his personal details are relevant.

From: Client Name [mailto:CName=ClientName.com.au@worldsecuresystems.com>; on behalf of; Client Name <ClientName@BusinessName.com.au>

Yes it really do string along that much. This is supposedly an enhancement. It does nothing but make the client look dodgy because the trusted address his end clients have seen for the last 20 years now looks spammy.

This was where the original notification of what was happening was to occur:

http://www.businesscatalyst.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?PostID=314882&A=SearchResult&SearchID=5523254&Obje...

Below is the extract about it:

Email deliverability enhancements  We've introduced two new changes with the goal of improving our email deliverability rates.

• Campaigns and operational emails (ie. workflow notifications) will now be signed with DKIM, acting as a digital signature and improving overall email deliverability.

• These emails will now also include a "sent via worldsecuresystems.com" header if the FROM email address is not a domain that has it’s DNS hosted with Business Catalyst.

Just incase you are a BC Partner like myself and have not actually seen this problem for yourself. After an hour of testing to figure out why the client sees it and I do not Live Chat tells me anyone with an email address hosted within BC actually does not see this stupid amendment to the FROM address. Here was Live Chats response:

"If the email is sent to "ClientName@BusinessName.com.au" which is hosted on BC, it does not include the worldseruresystem in the header, and if I sent it to myself it includes the header, as my email is not hosted on BC. So it also depens on the receipient's email address."

Trully idiots are being employed within BC. How can we as BC Partners ever trust any testing we do in this system when we cannot even display what the end client is seeing?! Does BC really think that this helps a business have credibility online? Anything that has a dumb domain name like 'worldsecuresystems.com' and thinks this makes people feel more secure about the legitimacy of an email is a fool. I know what the relevenace 'worldsecuresystems' has within BC but 1 million+ other people do not. It is like typing into the subject line "This Is Not SPAM". Irrespective of the digital signature this change supposedly makes in improved email deliverability is countered by the shear stupidity of how it appears.

I clearly have a problem with this, my client has a problem with it too. I am sure we are not the only ones.

Report · May 26, 2013

1. Web form etc from you set up in the admin.

2. Campaign stuff to improve delieverybility which was made on purpose so more campaign emails go through the email was a documented change:

http://www.businesscatalyst.com/bc-blog/announcing-our-march-2013-system-update

Email deliverability enhancements
We've introduced two new changes with the goal of improving our email deliverability rates.

Campaigns and operational emails (ie. workflow notifications) will now be signed with DKIM, acting as a digital signature and improving overall email deliverability.
These emails will now also include a "sent via worldsecuresystems.com" header if the FROM email address is not a domain that has it’s DNS hosted with Business Catalyst.

Report · May 30, 2013

Hi Liam...

Thanks for outlining the new enhancement again..

But I am having the same complaint from a client who does not want the "sent via worldsecuresystems.com" on behalf of "Company Domain" ... I was having the exact same issue as Matthew - where I could not understand the problem as I did not see it, while testing through my own email as my company domain's DNS is hosted through BC!

Is there some thing we can do to turn this off?... as email deliverability is not as much of an issue with my client as remaining creditable with it's recipients!

Going back to my client with a "No you are going to have to live with this" is not an option! This does not happen on any other hosting platform so why should we have to put up with it here?

Kind regards,

Sean Saville

Report · May 30, 2013

I believe this is standard practice within email marketing companies. When I receive a campaign mailed by a large email marketing company it will say "mailed by: large company name" or something indicating that company and then "Signed by: my company".

My clients are okay with this because I provide simple education on this issue explaining why signing is important and how the system works in actually mailing the campaigns/workflows.

Also emails going to spam box may or may not be BCs fault. It could very well be the email itself but there are many reasons emails hit the spam box.

I find that education is key to helping clients understand why things happen certain ways. It is easier said than done but it can be done.

Report · May 30, 2013

Hi Lynda...

Thank you very much for your reply - and I do agree - education is key to helping clients! .. and I have not actually tried to educate him with this issue yet - as I do not really understand the reasoning behind having the email header the way it is at present! So I guess I need to be educated first before being able to go back to him with how this benefits his company?

Just wanted to point out that in the header, as per your example, my clients emails say "Mailed by: amazonses.com" and then "Signed by: worldsecuresystems.com"! I have attached a screenshot from my personal Gmail account to show this as all the details do not show up in my business email as it is hosted with BC!

And this is how it looks from my clients side once he forwards the email on to me...

This is also only a workflow email notification and not an email marketing campaign!

... and as per your suggestion I have been looking at other marketing email that are sent to my account and have found this one which is very interesting - from BC Gurus.... which works exactly how my client would like it to look!

How do they get this working correctly?

Kind regards,

Sean Saville

Report · May 30, 2013

Hi Sean from my tests and what BC Live Chat told me this is how it runs. If you have a BC account and your DNS details are hosted within BC then you will not see the message. Only people outside the BC system see the message. Even if they have a website hosted with BC if their email is not then they see the message. If by chance one of those clients you are sending to also has a site hosted with BC and their email is with BC then they will not see the message.

I was even having issues trying to talk to the Live Chat because stupidly as always most BC/Adobe staff form what has been said do not have bc email accounts so they do not see these problems. It took him a long time of testing and then going away and asking questions just to figure it out.

Progress is always good and is needed but some things in BC are getting worse and worse. It is not good having clients complain saying I do not want to use a system when everytime I need to send a campaign I have to call you to fix it.

Have you discovered what is happening to the HTML and inline styles rules that now no longer work for some Outlook email browsers since the swap to AWS servers. I have a case in progress now with BC trying to discover how something has broken so bad.

Think of all the thousands of automated emails clients systems are sending that are assumed to never change but infact are. Clients do not see them because they do not send them to themselves obviously. This is how it took so long to discover this issue in particular. Me I am auditing all my clients email templates, campaigns, and automated message at my cost just to ensure they are respected.

Report · May 30, 2013

Interesting.

Mine says Mailed By: amazones.com but it says signed by ubhape2.com (my company).

I just realized something. I use Google Apps for my email and have the SPF for google in the DNS records. I also believe that BC Gurus uses Google Apps (I believe I read that somewhere at some time). Thus our emails are being "signed" by our company not by BC or Worldsecure Systems just mailed by them (or Amazon now).

Your client uses BC Mail? I agree this would be desirable to be improved or changed. I do not understand the process required or if it is even possible.

As for the forwarding that very well may be the email program not BC but I am not sure.

Report · May 30, 2013

It will be very intersting to hear what BC staff have to say about this issue... and whether there is a work around as my client does use an external DNS host - and should really have the same header information/privileges as BC hosted email clients?

Why should they be different?

Hi Matthew

Unfortunately I have not used the email marketing side of BC so have not come across any of those other issues!

Report · May 31, 2013

Should be obvious? External email and internal email, different locations and many people were having issues with emails being derlivered. People want emails to go through and so BC made the change to be most effective by that.

Cant have the from you want but you get the emailed derlivered. If it fails and they dont get it, the head being as your email or not does not matter.

Report · Jun 03, 2013

Who are you to decided what and how a clients business should be represented? Are you yourself representing Adobe here? Can I take this response and hand it to my clients knowing that this is Adobe's final word on the subject?

I would prefer to be hearing from someone who can speak for Adobe in their decisions and provide an legitimate answer that allows my clients to then make a decision on if to stay or leave the BC system.

Report · Jun 03, 2013

Hey Mathew,

No, of course not but after many BC partners and others raised the issues over time of derliverability and after review BC have implemented this sollution to improve that. I personally can not see another option to achieve both, Maybe BC will come up with that but at this time, this is the implementation to address a bigger issue.

The reason for the change was in the blog post but if you would like more detailed informatin I suggest creating a ticket so it is logged and you get a direct private response if that is what you are after.

Report · May 27, 2013

To add full to the fire several clients have now complained about email campaigns now hitting SPAM bins where as previously they never did. Client that sparked this complaint has now already called to say they have abandoned BC as the solution. Thanks BC I really needed that.

Report · Jan 29, 2014

Hi!

I have a solution to this when DNS is hosted with a 3rd party provider. Contact me for details.

Julio César.