Emails – questions and answers

With TBA mailboxes, you can theoretically send and receive messages up to 100 MB (megabytes) in size. But don’t overdo it: we recommend sending emails only up to 20 MB in size.

• Note that for many email recipients, their possible maximum size for emails can also be significantly less than 100 MB (often 10-20 MB). If you want to send larger e-mail attachments, it is advisable to clarify this briefly with the recipient beforehand. (At Google Mail, for example, the maximum size is currently 25 MB, 1and1 allows a maximum of 20 MB per file attachment, etc., these values can also change at any time).
• Please also note that an email can be significantly larger than the actual attachment: when sending, the data is typically specially encoded for reliable sending (mime encoding) and the email can thus be over 33% larger than the raw data sent along. – Check the size of the e-mail again before sending if you want to send such large files: After saving and before sending, you will usually find the finished e-mail in the “Drafts” folder of the e-mail program, and you can usually set the file size to be displayed there.
• Many email recipients get annoyed when they receive unsolicited large emails. These recipients may be receiving email over slow Internet access or a mobile network, for example (a very large email may be hindering their email reception or making it costly). Be considerate. Do not send large data (e.g. “funny videos”) without being asked.

We answer this necessary question on a separate page: Addressing circular emails in a DSGVO-compliant way

Here are the main reasons and the possible remedies:

Cause 1

HTML e-mails often automatically end up in the spam filter just because they contain HTML code: For some recipients, these are already considered spam-suspicious in principle (because of the many possibilities for abuse through HTML e-mails).

(If software on the recipient’s side then also detects faulty HTML code in the e-mails – this happens more quickly than one would assume – many anti-spam programs sound the alarm all the more, as they suspect misuse or attempted hacking).

Solution

Ask the recipient to set your email address as “trusted” in their anti-spam program. Often it is enough for the recipient to enter your e-mail address in the address book program of his computer.

Cause 2

E-mail programs are not browsers and often do not execute HTML correctly or at least very idiosyncratically.

Solution

When embellishing with HTML commands and images, limit yourself to a few long-proven standard features that are as compatible and less error-prone as possible, and test your HTML emails for errors.

We will be happy to create reliable templates and signatures for you, and we can also check for you before sending how a particular e-mail would look on the most commonly used e-mail programs. This makes sense especially for mass marketing emails.

Cause 3

You send too many email circulars at once. If too much email arrives at a recipient provider (e.g. Gmail, 1und1, T-online, WEB.de etc.) with the same content, these providers block further deliveries for a while as an anti-spam measure. The recipient may not even notice.

The sending of mass mails via TBA servers is also strictly limited in terms of time and quantity (see our GTC, which we will be happy to send you again), so as not to make the TBA server system suspicious as a SPAM sender, blocking measures could also take effect here.

Solution

Discuss a mass mail distribution with us!

In many good mailing list programs, you can “throttle” the mailing, that is, spread it out over a longer period of time, to legally circumvent these restrictions.

If you are interested in sending e-mails in large quantities, ask us: we can suggest good providers for e-mail marketing and also advise and support you further. This significantly increases the chance that your emails will arrive correctly, and you will also receive good reports on the dispatch to be able to optimize the process.

Cause 4

It has happened – albeit rarely – that our e-mail dispatch server appears in a spam list, perhaps because one of our customers has sent mass e-mails in spam-like volume due to ignorance of the legal situation. Or a captured e-mail account or the associated customer computer was actually misused by hackers and crooks to send spam. See Secure passwords):

As a consequence, all mailings from this server are then temporarily under general suspicion and may be blocked worldwide.

Solution

Please contact us immediately so that we can take corrective and defensive actions together with our email service provider.

Here are the main reasons and the possible remedies:

Cause 1

The recipient is not connected to the Internet (offline) when reading an HTML e-mail. The image was not included, as is common with email marketing. But in the e-mail there is only a link to an image on the Internet to reload it when you open the e-mail. This is not possible if you are not connected to the Internet at the moment, and instead you see empty picture frames with red or black crosses.

Possible solution

You can enable offline viewing for the recipient by sending copies of the images right away, rather than linking them to a location on the Internet.

Disadvantages of this solution

1. however, this increases the size of an email because the images require a lot of storage space, which can cause disgruntlement for the recipient, especially when receiving mobile emails.

2. moreover, this can be a filter criterion for spam filters.

3. such e-mails can look bad if the recipient has the “Text format only” option turned on, which is quite often the case: then all deco and image elements are displayed mostly unsorted among each other like an “attachment”.

Recommendation

We generally advise against including images by default in email newsletters without planning how emails would look without the images.

Is the email an important marketing email and are no surprises desired in how the email is received? We can run a test for you on a number of popular email programs with the email in question before sending it .

Cause 2

The recipient has set to receive all messages in “Text Only” format or the recipient has blocked the download of images in HTML messages. (This is both very common). The e-mail may also pass through an e-mail server that does not understand HTML on its way to the recipient.#

Solution

HTML emails should be designed to include an alternative “text only” version. Rudimentary, many e-mail programs offer this automatically, without you noticing or being able to influence it.

Recommendation

Good email software allows you to visually optimize this “text only” variant. However, this must be manually implemented editorially. This is an extra effort that is worth it, because then both the “HTML” display and the “Text only” display will look good.

Is the email an important marketing email and are no surprises desired in how the email is received? We can run a test for you on a number of popular email programs with the email in question before sending it.

Solution

Then your the format of your email is probably “Rich Text” or “HTML” because you want to display fonts in bold, italics or color, for example. You and the recipient may have different screen resolutions. Or you have defined different default sizes for fonts. If you have not taken this into account when determining the screen sizes, sometimes these unsightly effects occur.

Recommendation

“Rich text” should be used with care; HTML email templates should be coded carefully accordingly.

It is best to leave the font sizes preset by the software as they are.

At TBA-Berlin, we can also check for you before sending how a particular e-mail would look on the most commonly used e-mail programs. This makes sense especially for mass marketing emails.