Spam

[LegalAlien]

Bulk is considered by us to be an email message sent to over 25 recipients. You really shouldn't be worried about our policy unless you are sending out bulk unsolicited emails i.e. emails send to a list of recipients that otherwise did not subscribe or agree to the use of their email addresses. What is your concern?

Yash - I had a spam abuse alert from Jodo last night, which threatens to deactivate my account. I have some questions, but please let me explain this first.

The email that caused the concern was sent to genuine all opt-in mailing list that has taken 2 years to build up. We do not buy email lists. These people are included because THEY have created an account with our company and ASKED to be included. I believe there are approximately 1000 receipients.

This is a crucial part of our business. These people want to be on our mailing list and the response we get to special offers is phenonomal. However, it seems 5 people reported us (out of 1000) last night. Why, I have absolutely no clue - there was a link on the email to unsubscribe themselves. OK - not everyone likes to click on them, but there are also very clear instructions on how to manually remove themselves by logging into their account. In addition, we ask them to email us or CALL if they have any difficulty. There is also a link on the website if they have forgotton their password. All in all, we have gone to GREAT lengths to avoid being labelled as spam (which we are most certainly not) and to make sure that we are only sending people mail who want it.

However, I DO realise the concern for Jodohost. Having read other threads, the last thing I want is for Jodo's IP's to be blacklisted. I have therefore recommended to the store that we sign up with Microsofts Bcentral mailing list facility. Here are my questions:

1. In the unlikely event that people double opt-in to the bcentral system and then report it as spam (like they have done with us), this couldn't possibly affect Jodo right? As the mail will not be coming from your IP's...?

2. The abuse email I received was pretty blunt. Stop, otherwise genuine or not, your account WILL be deactivated.

- The support staff were kind enough to give me the email addresses of those who complained, which I have now manually removed from our database.

- Being such a crucial part of the business, I would like to send out a last email detailing our move to bcentral, and information about how to sign up. If we cannot do this, then we really have no way of letting the vast majority (presumably 995 receipients who did not complain) of our customers what we are doing.

However, I am NOT willing to compromise my account. I am asking for permission to send this last email. The quote above was posted by you some months ago, but I guess your position has changed somewhat. Understandably. But this is honestly a genuine case. I would not be making all this effort if it were not..!!!!

Please note - we do not sell viagra, pen!$ enlargers, pharmacutical products, mortgages, health insurance, cosmetic surgery, and I am not the spouse of any recently murdered foreign head of state wanting to launder money!!!! In addition, our website is genuine, our email address is genuine, and our service is exceptional. All these people needed to do was give us a call.

In this case, I promise you it was the spam complaints that were not genuine, not our email... it was easier to push 'report' than hit 'reply'. Maybe they had a bad day. I hate spam as much as the next man, but I don't pick on the genuine emarketers.


PLEASE let me have your thoughts - I'm just asking for a little understanding, that's all. Email newsletters when sent to a (mostly!) loyal customer base like ours really do work...

a frustrated legalalien...

By the way - if anyone has any recommendations for a mailing list service, please let me know. Thanks all.

 

[Yash]

I totally understand your concern. Infact I show sympathy towards your case but there is nothing I or JodoHost can do to help you. I find the current black listing procedures ridiculous but if we don't comply with blacklists such as Spews, Spamcop, etc. our IPs will be blacklisted and everyone will suffer...

I went over the spam complaint against your account, it seems all the spam complaints have come from *@aol.com. You might want to begin by removing all email addresses with that domain from your mailing list. It appears aol automatically reported these emails as SPAM

Our policy is that we do not allow Unsolicited Bulk Emailing from our servers or from other servers (if you link to a site on our servers). If we receive several spam complaints, we treat your list as an unsolicited even if you claim its solicited. We treat is as unsolicited because all major anti-spam groups (SpamCop, SPEWS) will treat it as unsolicted and blacklist you.

It really doesn't make a difference if you are going to bulk email from us or another server because if you list a website hosted on our server, SpamCOP and spews will trace that website back to our servers!

What I do recommend you do if you want to bulk mail is be very careful! Ask all your customers to reconfirm their lisitng every 3 or 4 months. You can send them an email right now (without any ad) asking them to reconfirm their listing by clicking a link. if they don't do that, then they are out. You can send this email every 3 months as I suggested..

 

[LegalAlien]

Thanks Yash. I appreciate your time to explain. To be honest, my gut is to stay completely away from email, it doesn't seem worth it to me - but I have a hard job convincing my clients when they see such positive responses (precisley because these are genuine opt-in lists).

In fact, we normally get several people email us after such newsletters because they accidentally clicked the unsubsribe link and want to be put back on. In addition, with the nature of the store in question, they often spark off conversations with the store owner!!

My intention is this:

1.To remove all aol addresses as you suggest.
2. Send out an email detailing our troubles and asking anyone who wishes, to resubscribe
3. Make the store owner understand that he cannot send out more than 1 email per month.
4. Remove the ability for anyone to add themselves to our mailing list automatically. Instead, I will make them send me an email confirming their wish, which I will keep on record.

Does this seem reasonable?


Yash - account deactivation is a really serious issue for me. With the above in place, can you reassure me that my account will not get deactivated before another warning? If this problem arises again, I will have to consider refusing this facility for my clients, and letting them go if they wish to keep the facility. That's a loss for me, but I would rather lose a client or two, than have all my clients accounts deactivated!! Let me know what you think..

 

[Yash]

As long as you promise to implement #1 and #2, I'll make sure your account is not deactivated without giving you time to respond and take action against spam complaints. I'm marking that against your account. But if we receive more and consistent complaints, I'll have to ask you to stop your mailing activity from our servers

 

[LegalAlien]

As long as you promise to implement #1 and #2, I'll make sure your account is not deactivated without giving you time to respond and take action against spam complaints. I'm marking that against your account. But if we receive more and consistent complaints, I'll have to ask you to stop your mailing activity from our servers

you have my word. Thank you.

 

[LegalAlien]

As long as you promise to implement #1 and #2, I'll make sure your account is not deactivated without giving you time to respond and take action against spam complaints. I'm marking that against your account. But if we receive more and consistent complaints, I'll have to ask you to stop your mailing activity from our servers

I have today moved the stores email mailing list to Bravenet.com so all bulk emailing will now be away from Jodo's servers. I did take your advice and remove all AOL addresses first.

Bravenet require a double opt-in before they will add anyone to our mailing list. ie the person not only needs to sign up but they must confirm their subscription through a confirmation email.

In the past 30 minutes since I uploaded the current list of 837 members, we have already had over 50 of our members confirm their subscription, confirming my belief that there IS still a place for genuine emarketing in this world full of spam.

Thanks again for the advice and for not going off the deep end like many hosts would. I feel much better about this now. And please let me know if we get any more complaints - though I'm pretty sure we've cracked this one.

UPDATE: since our decision to move to bravenet, and ask all our members to double opt back in, we got about 80% of our members to do this. Quite an overwhelming response for a mailing list in my opinion.