Completing the Loop
So you’ve got your SPF records setup nicely, you’ve used the tools available at the Postmaster sites, and your emails are being delivered, but now what? There are two things you’re concerned with now: are your emails being read and are they being reported as spam? Feedback Loops (FBLs) can’t help you with the former, but they can help you with the latter.
A Feedback Loop is pretty simple idea: when a user signifies that they believe your message to be spam, the email provider notifies you of this and sends you the message that was flagged. The only difficulty involved is that an FBL must be setup with each email providers and ISP individually, and that each FBL you setup has a different set of requirements. Typically, FBL information is listed on the Postmaster sites, so a good place to start is the list of sites that I have here.
The setup of the FBL will vary for each email provider, but here are a couple examples:
AOL
AOL has two steps to setup an FBL. The first step is to create a specific email address, fbl@. The second step is to prove ownership of the IP address in question. More info here: http://postmaster.aol.com/Postmaster.FeedbackLoop.php
Comcast
Comcast has a pretty straightforward method to signup for their FBL. You give them your contact information and the IP addresses you wish to claim. They review your information and will approve or deny your application within two weeks.
More info here: http://postmaster.comcast.net/feedback-loop.html
Yahoo
Yahoo functions a little differently. The main difference is that Yahoo requires you to sign your emails with DomainKeys or DKIM, and they also refer to the FBL as the Complaint Feedback Loop. DKIM and DomainKeys have a similar purpose to that of SPF, and I’ll most likely cover them in a post in the future. More info here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/feedback/
Those are just a couple of the Feedback Loops you’ll want to setup, but they provide a quick glimpse into the different processes involved.