Ensuring Email Delivery

When an email is sent to a submitter or a reviewer there is a chance it may be marked as spam by automated filters. To help prevent this the are steps we have taken and there are things you also need to consider when designing your automated emails. Here’s a quick guide:

Email Disclaimer

By default we include a ‘Lineup Nina’ disclaimer on all emails that are sent, this serves two purposes

  • Allows users to unsubscribe and informs them of the Lineup Ninja privacy policy.
  • Makes the content of the email longer. This reduces the chance of the email being marked as spam.

The disclaimer appears beneath any footer image you provide and in smaller text to the body to distinguish it from the body.

There is an option to toggle this disclaimer on or off as you wish and you can replace it with your own. If you toggle it off we strongly suggest you replace it with something of a similar length.

Email Subject

The subject of an email is critically important for delivery, particularly to Office 365 users. For example in testing we found ‘Your submission received’ would not be acceptable but ‘Thanks for your submission’ is fine. The default subjects we have provided were all tested successfully, if you change the subject we suggest you test your email (see below).

Email Content

The main body of the email is also important. Try to avoid text like ‘click here’. A longer body is preferred to a short one and is more engaging for the receiving user!

Testing Your Templates

The easiest way to test your templates is to just try them with your email address. Invite yourself to give a submission then process it through the stages of the workflow, eg submitted, rework, waitlist etc.

We have found that Office 365 is the most picky service regarding marking email as Junk. You can test Office 365 by signing up for a free account at Outlook.com and then creating a submission with that email address.

If you are struggling with testing your templates then please reach out to support.

Technical Aspects

There are several technical aspects to achieving successful email delivery. We have put in place the following:

  • Dedicated IP addresses - We don’t share our infrastructure with bulk email senders
  • SPF Records - A technical measure to ensure other people can’t send emails from lineup.ninja
  • DKIM - A technical measure to ensure the content of your email cannot be changed by a 3rd party and to validate that it is being sent by Lineup Ninja.