Email with shortened links are not delivered

#1

Our email has worked well for years, but suddenly this spring, things went awry. Bluehost has informed me that shortened URLs are causing emails to be marked as SPAM. How can I send a full URL in the Signup Confirmation Email sent in PayPal Options? Also, is there an easy way to extract the full URL when I have to generate a new registration link to send to new members? I will markup the email using the anchor tag. Website is ivtom.org. Thanks for any help!

#2

Links with query strings are also likely to be marked as SPAM. I’d suggest setting up a transactional email service to avoid having your email going through Bluehost’s servers. Unless Bluehost is marking your emails as SPAM themselves, the real reason your emails are being marked as SPAM may have more to do with Bluehost’s IP addresses than the shortened links anyway.

I use SendGrid for most of my transactional emails (both for myself and for clients). It is fairly easy to setup and competitively priced (free for up to 4,000 emails per month).

#3

Thank you, Pat D. I’ll look into SendGrid. Does SendGrid receive also or will we still receive through Bluehost servers?

#4

Sends only. Incoming mail (and anything you send from an email client app) still goes through Bluehost. This is only for emails being sent by WordPress. (Well, you could set it up for other apps that use PHP Mail, but you get my drift.)

#5

Oh, so I couldn’t setup my website email on Apple Mail — using the SendGrid email server settings?

And what about integrating SendGrid with Gmail? Our Membership Manager uses gmail and has the membership email address integrated as a POP account. Would she still be able to do that with SendGrid?

Thanks again.

Take care.

Minna B.

#6

Ok. First, are you sending TO or FROM these email accounts? SendGrid is for outgoing email only. There is nothing to set up for receiving mail from SendGrid.

Second, since you said Bluehost was telling you your emails were being marked as SPAM, I thought you were sending mail using PHP Mail (wp_mail()) on your web server hosted on Bluehost. In other words, you had done nothing to change the way email was being sent from your web server.

If you are currently sending mail using wp_mail() on your Bluehost server could you tell me exactly what you have done so far in setting up SendGrid and what exactly has happened? Error messages, etc…

Thanks in advance for your patience.

#7

I’m getting back to this issue after some delays. I have not installed SendGrid yet. Bluehost tells me the email delivery problem is caused by the shortened URL. So I have installed the API for goo.gl and the link is being sent. I edited the Confirmation Email to embed the link in the anchor tag, but it gets mangled. The <a href code is visible in the email, but the link is clickable. Can you tell me what is wrong with this code? Thanks.

<a href="[http://goo.gl/99999#www.domainname.org]">click here</a>

Maybe the brackets aren’t correct. Thanks for your help.

Correction: The actual code for the link is the %%registration_url%% found in the Sign up Confirmation Email in the PayPal Options. SO this is the way I have it:

<a href="[%%registration_url%%]">click here</a>...

When the email arrives, the google shortcode link is clickable, but the <a href code is displayed.

Should I do this instead:

<a href="['%%registration_url%%' /]click here</a>

Thanks.

#8

When you put real URL in “href” attribute, no brackets is need, I think.

#9

Thanks, krumch. But this isn’t a real URL. That is the problem, getting the shortcode to work as a clickable link. The new member was able to click on the expanded goo.gl shortened URL, but the HTML code was showing. Maybe I need to use the backslash with the reg url code? Here’s what it looked like in the email:

To complete your registration, <a href="[http://goo.gl/pdbLE1#www.domainname.org]">click here</a>

So it expanded properly, but is mangled. Any ideas?

#10

But “http://goo.gl/pdbLE1#www.domainname.org” is “a real URL”… So I think you should try:

<a href="http://goo.gl/pdbLE1#www.domainname.org">

#11

If only I could do that! This is the setting under PayPal Options / Sign-up Confirmation Email. Aren’t the s2Member shortcodes the only option here? The shortcode for the registration link is %%registration_url%%. That is what expands to the goo.gl shortened link. I need to embed the shortened URL link because it is causing the emails to be dumped as spam and not delivered.

Thanks for getting back to me.

#12

I see no reason why you can’t change %%registration_url%% to any text you want, include a link…

To put a [s2M shortcode] there will need some custom code.

#13

Thanks. The s2Member shortcode is generated after the PayPal transaction. So the generated link is tied to this PayPal payment. It isn’t possible to use a generic URL for this. No?

#14

Both Yes and No. Shortcode (backed with need custom code) can contain anything, include PayPal info for the exactly transaction, if needs. Sorry, but at the moment I can’t say what exactly link needs there - must do research first.

#15

Thank you. Please let me know if you find anything.