Question : Postini and Spam Filtering for automated emails

Our company has developed an internet based Business System that provides full operations capabilities through a browser. As part of this we have e-commerce portals for online quoting, lead management, etc.

We have run into some snags with some of our systems and Spam Filters. First off let me mention that no emails are sent without input from a user, so no bulk list spamming or anything like that. All emails are either, User filled out a quote online and are getting sent their quote, or a lead aggregater (such as the lendingtree.com type of sites) sends the information into our system and it generates an automatic email.

So the issue is that spam filters are preventing these emails from getting through, either because of their subjects/body content or something. Are there any resources out there to help me understand the rules to make a legitimate system driven business communication make it to their intended recipient. We have found even that even when the customer is on the phone with a CSR and requests a PDF of their quote that those emails will get filtered depending on the server they are sent to... I believe it's from such verbage as "your quote from XXXXXX company" in the subject line.

Any advice or direction would be great.

Answer : Postini and Spam Filtering for automated emails

Spamassassin reported :-
SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-0.091, required 5, BAYES_00 -0.50, HTML_MESSAGE 0.00, SARE_SPEC_LEO_LINE03a 0.41)
Nothing wrong there. You are doing very well to get a negative score.

You connected from 205.234.161.171. Checking the RBLs at www.dnsstuff.com you are listed in the backscatter RBL. See http://www.backscatterer.org/?ip=205.234.161.171 for more information.
The typical reason for getting in this RBL is accepting mail without checking to see if the recipient exists. If it does not exist then the mail server will send back a non delivery report to the forged sender and this is called backscatter.
What mail server are you using?

Received:  from server.excention.com (server.excention.com [205.234.161.171])
Your reverse DNS entry and HELO/EHLO name is all correct.

You dont appear to be on any whitelists. I would suggest at least implementing SPF and DNSBL as they are free. Details of whitelists can be found on my website :-
http://www.gbnetwork.co.uk/mailscanner/


I am not sure why other experts didn't answer. Perhaps the internet marketing people realised it wasnt really their area and antispam people thought it looked marketing related from your first few lines.