Re: [exim] VERP questions: deliverability, method and execut…

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Author: Chip
Date:  
To: Exim-Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [exim] VERP questions: deliverability, method and execution
On 6/4/2012 4:24 PM, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
>
> Chip wrote:
>> First, do the users of VERP experience greater deliverable rates
>> compared to those senders who forgo VERP?
> VERP will not directly improve deliverability.
> It will allow you to more quickly and accurately identify addresses that
> are not deliverable, and remove them from future mailings, so indirectly
> it will increase the percentage of messages that are deliverable by
> removing no hopers.
> However this comes at a cost of requiring a single delivery per
> recipient (which you may already require if you do any message
> personalisation or tracking).
>
>> It would be great to know if
>> implementing it in addition to other best-practices helps in deliverable
>> rates. (In our setup the Mail User Agent can only create VERP headers
>> when using phpmailer and not SMTP, and therefore an unsubscribe link in
>> the headers cannot be created, perhaps adding to lower deliverablity rates?)
>>
>> Secondly, would we be better of getting Exim to produce the VERP
>> error-to headers rather than our Mail User Agent -- would doing so cut
>> down on overhead and processing memory?
> I can't comment on the deliverable rates - it sounds like you are
> working in a marketing type application, which is not where my
> experience lies.
>
> You can do VERP at either MUA or MTA level (although the MTA has to be
> at least partially aware of VERP to allow capturing of any bounce
> messages). It sounds like you have some reasons to do this within the
> MTA due to your MUA functionality. That should work fine. In general
> handling VERP in the MUA allows more flexibility in things such as
> deliverability tracking (against, say, message content). However this
> is unlikely to be a major difference.
>
> The exim mailing list does VERP at the list processing level rather than
> within the MTA - this allows us to use VERP for some, but not all,
> deliveries, which is a bandwidth compromise that works for us.
>
>     Nigel.

>

Thanks for the information. Our MUA has no capability to insert
unsubscribe links in the headers and I know that reduces deliverable
scores. So I can either opt to use the Exim MTA to create VERP data (in
which case we use SMTP and get built-in unsubscribe links) or keep our
MUA and use Exim to modify headers with personalized unsubscribed
links. Either choice carries their difficulties for our company and
experience level, although I believe we can get through this.

Let me ask this: can someone explain the workflow within the the
exim.conf which would allow us to create VERP data? I have read
numerous online threads about just the part that creates the VERP data
but I cannot understand how that fits in within the entire framework and
flow of a daunting exim.conf file. Again, once I understand that part I
can be more specific with additional questions -- but this is good, and
I'm learning bit by bit.

Thanks you.