So recently I have had the issue of our clients needing to send out mass emails and sending more emails than Telstra’s mail server will allow through (their mail servers are mail.bigpond.com smtp.telstrabusiness.com) which is 10mb every 10 minutes. Now for clients that email in bulk (eg. Invoice runs, Newsletters, Email Marketing) this can be a problem because you may get bounce backs from Telstra’s mail servers saying that you cannot send or worse you can get your IP blocked for around 6 hours!! That means that everyone sending from that internet connection will not be able to send!!
The way to remove this restriction is through a service called “SMTP Mass Mail”. This will allow you to send over the 10mb per 10 minute limit that is offered through Telstra’s standard mail servers. There is no limit on the amount of emails sent through this server the only limit is that your emails must not exceed 20mb per email.
This sounds like something simple that you should be able to activate just by calling someone at Telstra, but it is not that simple because it seems most people you talk to do not know what the SMTP Mass Mail service is or they don’t know how to activate it. The first time I tried to activate it on an account it took about 10 phone calls to different departments and eventually I got onto somebody at technical support that knew about it and was able to steer me in the right direction.
To activate Telstra’s Mass Mailing Service you will need to call service and activations and activate it. The number for them is 13 22 53. (Or find it on this page)
If you are an enterprise customer than call the enterprise support line and talk to them about it on 1800 730 062. I have found they are a lot more helpful and the technical support people will actually know what you are talking about, then they will put you through to the sales people to process your order.
When you are on the phone with them will be able to call the client and get permission for you to talk to Telstra to make this change.
You will need the Telstra service number (Starts with a letter then full of numbers and ends in a letter)or the phone number that is attached to the email service to give them as a reference to the internet connection. The username on the ADSL service will also allow Telstra to find it.
When talking to the sales person from Telstra they may not know the process that is involved in activating this.
The process that they need to take is register a pop3 mailbox(this is at no charge to Telstra business broadband clients) that will not be used. Then they process the SMTP Mass Mailing Service from that. Make sure that they are also supplied with the correct external IP address that you are sending from.
Extra Information on SMTP Mass Mail
Mass Email is also known as
-SMTP Mass Mail Service
-Telstra Business Email
Once it is activated and you receive confirmation E-Mail saying the outgoing server should be set to
smtp-au.server-mail.com this is the wrong server and may not work. You need to change outgoing Email server to:
smtp-au.server-secure.com
If you need to give the customer service references to what you are talking about the following links mention the service:
-Page 17 of the Telstra Business Quick Reference Guide
-Section 16 (Page 63) of this Internet Solutions Section/Business Broadband Document
