SUCCESSFUL EMAIL DELIVERY CHECKLIST

To ensure that emails are delivered to the intended recipients without interruption, the following
Mail Servers should be whitelisted:

To ensure that emails are delivered to the intended recipients without interruption, the following
Web Servers should be whitelisted:

To ensure that emails are delivered to the intended recipients without interruption, the following email addresses should be entered into the Contact list of the Firewall and/or Web or Mail Client:

Multiple hostnames and IP addresses are listed because we have a redundant infrastructure, containing multiple servers, to properly service all of our clients and provide back-up in the event of server failure.

Please ensure that if you are using an alias for your mail server, you also set up an MX record (Mail Exchanger Record) for your alias. For example, if your mail server is “mail.school.ny.us” and you create an alias as “school.ny.us” then you must have an MX record not only for “mail.school.ny.us” but also for “school.ny.us”.

You should test whether your firewall will allow email traffic from the IP and email addresses listed in Section 1. We recommend you configure your email server or firewall to accept traffic from the specified IPs and email addresses. You can run a simple test by placing the IPs and emails into your firewall testing feature, if available. Since many mail servers trigger spam blocks if they receive a certain number of emails from one sender in a short time interval, it’s possible that all your emails could be blocked. Please refer to the following section, 2.C., for further information.

Work with your Survey Administrator to setup the mail server to permit the volume of survey email deliveries. If your mail server has a threshold — allowing only a certain number of emails to pass through within a certain period of time — it may result in dropping remaining emails. For example, if your mail server is set to allow 100 emails per minute, and Zarca Interactive attempts to deliver 120 within one minute, the last 20 emails will be dropped.

To ensure successful delivery, simply permit the mail server to allow for the specified number of survey invites to be cleared.

This section is specific to organizations using Google as their mail provider and POSTINI as the extensive firewall. The following directions will help in setting up your firewall.

The best way to determine this is by multiplying the number of incoming emails with the size of individual email. Ideally, the amount of available space should be more than 10 times the storage your emails will require.

Please make sure your Operating System and Browser are supported. Zarca Interactive supports Windows XP or higher, Mac OSX, iPad and Android. Zarca Interactive also supports Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Safari 5.0 and above, Google Chrome 7.0 and above, and Firefox 3.0 and above. To determine which browsers we support, please go to;
http://research.zarca.com/zhome/Zarca-Browser-Support.html

After confirming that your mail servers are whitelisted, we recommend performing an email stress test several days prior to your survey’s launch. You should send 500-2,000 emails, depending upon the size of the organization or group of participants involved. These emails should be sent to a single email address designated by your organization. Again, Sections 1 through 3 are designed to ensure successful email delivery. Upon receiving confirmation that every email sent was delivered, we can be confident that the survey launch will not be delayed due to email delivery issues.

After the stress test, it is recommended that you check whether your firewall has allowed all email traffic from the IP and email addresses listed in Section 1 through your firewall. If not, we recommend you revisit section 2.B and 2.C for firewall guidelines.

First, we are opposed to spamming. The contract between your organization and Zarca Interactive explicitly states this policy. We also support the initiatives by mail administrators to keep spam out of their organizations. Unfortunately, this effort can have unintended consequences whereby legitimate emails get blocked. When you are sending your next survey, please remember the following:

1. Make sure your targeted recipients will not find your email offensive or regard it as a nuisance. You should have an explicit or implicit reason for sending your email. Stated differently, there should be a business relationship (direct or indirect) between the sender and the person being invited to participate in the survey. If you are not sure about this, we suggest you consult someone knowledgeable before proceeding.
2. Use the survey invitation to justify why you are inviting them to participate. Remind them of an existing business relationship between them and your organization, explain what you intend to do with the results of the survey and communicate your privacy policy.
3. Where applicable, provide each person a way to unsubscribe from your list.
4. If someone indicates they wish to unsubscribe, or that your emails are not welcome, please remove that person from your list. You should not send such persons reminders nor should you send them future surveys unless you have explicitly obtained their permission.

It is common for some organizations to deploy surveys in a computer lab. If you are doing this, your survey must be a multi-access link. There are multiple ways of deploying surveys in labs:

1. You can store the survey’s URL in the browser’s FAVORITES list and direct each user to access it from there. If you follow this method, you should remember to do three things:
   1. Direct users to close their browsers after they submit their surveys
   2. After the survey is over, go into Survey Manager and expire the survey
      OR
   3. Remove the survey URL from the Favorites list of each browser
2. 2. You can make the survey URL the home page in the browser and direct each user to merely launch the browser. The survey will launch once the browser is opened. If you follow this method, you should remember to do three things:
   1. Direct users to close their browsers after they submit their surveys
   2. After the survey is over, go into Survey Manager and expire the survey
      OR
   3. Change the home page on each browser