Watchout for this email deliverability trap
I sent an email broadcast to my subcribers a few days ago
and thousands of the messages bounced right back to me.
Why?
It turns out that I used a URL link in the email that was listed
on a spam blocking site, and their black list is used by lots and
lots of ISPs around the world to help block out spam.
It wasn’t my URLs that were listed, it was someone else’s.
It wasn’t my email server URL address, it was just because
in my email was a URL domain that was accused (right or wrong)
of being a spam sender.
The lesson learned? …
(you learn something new all the time, and I’ve been doing
email marketing since 1994!)
If you are going to use a link to someone else’s domain address
in your email, make sure to go to this site and do a search to
see if they are on this ‘black list’ before you include it in
your outgoing email broadcast.
http://www.rulesemporium.com/cgi-bin/uribl.cgi
Type in the domain name in question, and select ALL RBL
then click Check It.
If it shows RED, do not put that domain name in your outgoing
email, instead use a redirect link from your domain to theirs, such
as this free one at:
http://www.hunteridge.com/redirect.txt
Want to know more about building and profiting from your own
email lists? Check this out…
http://www.GrandMasterOfListBuilding.com
- – -
One other thing, make sure to click on the “America” link on the
right hand column of this page to watch some important videos
that affect citizens of the USA, as well as my friends around
the world too. Your comments are welcome.
As always, my best to you –
Mark Hendricks
October 10th, 2007 at 12:31 am
[...] plugim_title = “How+to+Check+to+See+if+a+Domain+is+Blacklisted”; I just read Mark Hendricks' blog post explaining why an email to his list bounced like crazy. Interestingly, it bounced because it [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Let’s be glad the ISPs aren’t involved with physical mail, or we wouldn’t get half the magazines we subscribe to or bills we need to pay or the like.
Just more evidence how crazy and misguided they are- if I’m understanding this right, I could have sent a friend an email saying “Avoid blacklisted.com” and that message might have gotten filtered out.
I wonder what would happen if I interfered with Comcast or Verizon sending postal mail to their customers… I think we know the answer!
At least they’ve eliminated spam, so I guess we should cut them some slack.
October 10th, 2007 at 4:00 am
Even though you said the link owner “was accused (right or wrong)”, I seem to have a problem with using a link if the owner is having that kind of trouble.
Wouldn’t it be more prudent to check it and if the owner’s link is on the black list, let the person know? Then wouldn’t it be novel to tell him/her that you would like to promote the site but only after they are removed from the blacklist?
If we have to check the sites out at the blacklist site, then why are we doing business with them?
Additionally, isn’t it a good idea to use redirects anyway so we don’t have our affiliate information exposed?
Just my humble opinion.
Peace,
Leon
[NOTE from Mark] – it’s hard to say if his domain is on that list rightly or wrongly, and yes, I immediately did let him know so he could contact that group to go through the process of being removed from the blacklist if possible. If you actively are using email marketing you most likely from time to time get on a blacklist due to people complaining instead of just unsubcribing, these are people who DID subscribe but are just trying to cause other people problems. And yes, it’s very good to use redirects so that you can track hits going to various things you promote — I was just trying to do two guys a favor by sending them a bunch of traffic because there was a good article that people needed to know about.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I am of the opinion that email is slowly becoming the new minefield. All it takes is someone marking your email as spam in their email client (especially true in gmail and yahoo and most other web-based email hosts) and the service will filter those emails again in the future.
While I like to be able to filter out spam as much as the next guy, I also am thinking that spam is one of those things that self perpetuates as the Spam reduction companies try to make you get more spam.
Since I first began seeing ads for the robots that harvest email addresses online I realized that as soon as an email address is shown on a webpage of any kind that a robot can surf, you are going to be on a spam list. Well those programs like s### arrest and the like actually post the email addresses of people who have clicked on their links, so that the robots now see the email address and can go after you with a vengeance for having stayed in the background for so long.
Mark, you were the one who taught me to avoid clicking on the challenge response links. I am glad you told me, because a lot of my early list building days were spent praying that I would get people on my list, and when I started to get people – even those who had autoresponders and challenge response email addresses – I wanted to make sure they got my emails. I learned that you were right by totally ruining one of my email addresses and now I still get hundreds of emails each day to that email address.
Thanks, Mark, and have an amazing day!
Micheal Savoie
productinaweekend.com