January 2003

Email Technique
You've Got Mail - No You Don't Cause You're Banned

I just got banned this month from emailing to AOL. Am I a bad boy who is spamming people. Absolutely not! Here's my story.

I was preparing my year end digest edition of "Great Speaking." When I tried to send it through my list management company, I got a notice that said, "Your mail is blocked by 1 ISP. Click here for more info." When I clicked on the link I got a note that I had exceeded AOL's standard of 100 complaints for every million emails sent.

EMERGENCY ACTION
Since it was a weekend and since I had to get 25,000 plus AOL addresses delivered, I extracted all my AOL addresses and sent them with an advanced email program called Mailloop.

Then it was time to start investigating.

Background: I have one of the most pristine lists anywhere. I had only about 20 complaints overall from all sources in over 4 million emails sent over 4 years. THEN AOL 8.0 came on the scene. AOL 8.0 has a report spam button right next to their delete button. I got 80 complaints in one day from just one mailing. Many were from typical AOL goobers who forgot they signed up, but many were from accidental complaints.

I called AOL to inquire about this and to attempt to get WhiteListed, which means you are cleared to send things to them. I had a great conversation with Anna the representative, but bottom line is that my list management company got their server blocked and I was on it. This could be from other list owners who are not as conscientious as me sending out spam or getting too many complaints.

The entire feeling I got after my long conversation with AOL was that every list management company on the face of the earth is getting their servers banned temporarily to force them to clean things up and to force people to call so they can weed out the legitimate publishers from the bad boys.

I got a call back today from AOL and they basically don't have any problem with me, but they need me to find another server to mail from or I'll continue to get blocked when trying to send through the server I'm on at mindshare.

NOTE: Every list management company that does any volume at all gets banned at one time or the other. If they are big enough and have personnel to talk to places like AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail the ban is usually only temporary, but could recur if something bad happens again.

They also said that things were settling down some as more people are using the spam button more judiciously and list management companies are cracking down on the bad mailers.

I can't talk to mindshare until Jan 2nd, but I'll keep you posted on what I've done and what you should do. In the mean time, if email marketing is important to you, you must have a backup plan in case of minor disasters like this--especially if they occur on a weekend and you MUST get a mailing out.

Upcoming topics for this section:

• HTML email

• Getting subscribers fast

• How to make money with your zine

• How to gain clout with your zine

• How to maximize the signups on your website

Back to January 2003 Index page