Work Better, Not Harder

You're receiving emails that you consider to be spam and it's frustrating. As small business owners, we're prone to getting on mailing lists. Consider that spam is in the eye of the beholder: what is spam to one person, is not to someone else. In Canada, we now have a legal definition of spam which may not match your own perceptions . As business owners that engage in email marketing, I feel we have to be a bit lenient and open to the efforts of others like us. After all, we know the effort that goes into creating an effective campaign. Before you start reporting fellow business owners as spammers, make sure you know if the email really is spam by the legal definition. In most cases, I encourage you to simply use the unsubscribe mechanism to get off lists . If there isn't one, that's a sign it's spam. And then there is real spam - we all know what that looks like. Clicking an unsubscribe link might be risky. So here's what you do instead: click the ...

Did you hear the one about the guy who protested the new Canadian anti-spam regulations? He started an email campaign and spammed thousands. No word of lie. Spamhaus responded via their Block Listing for the fellow’s IP address: IP is sending spam to scraped email addresses or purchased list. Spam asks recipient to sign petition against Canadian antispam law FISA. Is OK to protest law--even law we at Spamhaus think is good law. Is not OK to spam to protest law, or for any other reason. Spamhaus is an international non-profit that tracks the Internet's spam sources, provides real time anti-spam protection for Internet networks, works with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spam and malware gangs, and lobbies governments for effective anti-spam legislation. Those of us who are doing legitimate business by email in Canada have no need to be concerned at all about the new regulations. If you have been following email marketing best practices, and using a bulk ...

photo by perthclotheslines It felt like doing laundry. Throw in the dusty email addresses and out come clean ones, with all the grime left behind. List cleaning involves 2 basic steps: identifying email addresses in your database that no longer exist or have been spelled wrong removing non-existent email addresses and correcting obvious typos List cleaning was a new experience for us. We had anticipated it might be needed at some point so had done some research – enough to know that there were many options available online. We figured it should be easy to do when the need arose. When the need did arise recently, I clicked my way to those apps we'd flagged as promising. I quickly discovered that it wasn't going to be as straightforward as I had imagined (and hoped). The first 2 apps I tried left me scratching my head in puzzlement. With no time to waste on a big learning curve, I did a new search and decided to try ListWiseHQ. What a pleasant surprise! It w...

photo by Anirudh Koul In simple terms, there are two things which affect the deliverability of your newsletter. The first is the content itself - the words, links and graphics included. The second is your own reputation . These things below impact deliverability and have nothing to do with the content in your email: The blacklist/whitelist status of your email address, domain, DNS settings, IP address, etc. Blacklisting can happen when you have high unsubscribe, complaint, and bounce rates resulting from (among other things): buying mailing lists using misleading subject lines and generally being sneaky not providing an easy way to unsubscribe The reputation of your bulk email service provider (ESP) All of the issues above also apply to them. They must work hard to ensure continued deliverability of your emails. This is part of the service you get when you use a bulk ESP and why it’s important to choose a reputable one. (We prefer iContact !) Click to Tweet ...

I really hate the word SPAM. For me, it usually means a sudden sick feeling in my stomach that has nothing to do with the unwanted visual of canned luncheon meat. Clicking that SEND button on a newsletter is the last step in a meticulous process. It’s like that little high we get from checking an action item off our to-do list. One thing done and onto the next. So when that SPAM checker pops up flashing ‘FAILED’ with a BIG RED X , I start feeling sick because I know I've got extra work ahead of me. (It doesn't actually flash and it’s not really so big, but that’s the way it seems to me when it happens.) My first reaction is "D*mn!" But of course, the SPAM checker is there to help us, not hinder us. It helps to make sure our newsletters get delivered and don't end up in SPAM folders. Still, I feel like shooting the messenger. There is a multitude of reasons that a newsletter can fail a SPAM check. The combinations and frequency of certain words and ph...

To the 'person' who has hijacked my domain: For 3 weeks now you have been making up email addresses that end with my domain name and sending spam emails on my behalf. Is it working for you? Are you making lots of money? Or just having a thrill? Please go find something more useful to do. Earn an honest living. Volunteer those techie skills for a good cause. Leave me alone. I don't want to get blacklisted again! Click to Tweet this Article

It feels like someone was messing with my credit score this week. My domain daleyprogress.com was blacklisted. There are a couple of things about this I'd like to share. How did it happen? Apparently, a link to an event in one of my newsletters pointed to a domain that was blacklisted. (Or at least that's my understanding based on the little info I've been able to get.) The immediate implication? Do I have to check every link in my newsletter against the blacklist to prevent this from happening again? I don't really know but, wow, what a pile of work that would be! How did I discover the problem? The hard way! I was sending test and regular emails that weren't arriving, even to myself. I initially thought the problem was with i-Contact . They were great about pointing me in the right direction. Then I had to contact Network Solutions which hosts my domain. They were quick to investigate and 'clear my name' for me. How can I know if...