Good Info For Members That Send Newsletters

[TCH-Dick]

Mailing List Administrators

 

In order to avoid spamming, mailing lists must implement a secure opt-in procedure. Many so-called "opt-in" lists are nothing of the sort. Beware anyone who wants to sell you lists. You will be disappointed.

 

I cannot stress strongly enough the need for secure opt-in. Many web-sites now feature "click-through" confirmation, or checkboxes which must be unchecked. However the initial sign up is accomplished, whether on a web site, or by email - the final confirmation phase must include a random code which is emailed to the intended recipient. If that code is not returned by the user, you must not add the address to your list. If you do not follow this procedure, you will inevitably spam somebody, whether or not that is your intent.

 

* If you implement this type of secure opt-in, and one of your subscribers has still reported your mailing as spam, please gather all the data on the incident and report it.

* If you do not have a working opt-in process, you should clean your list by reconfirming all subscribers using a secure opt-in procedure as described above. The most important part of this confirmation is that if a subscriber takes no action, then that subscriber is de-listed.

 

Sending bulk mail requires careful record-keeping and responsible management. If you do not have the technical ability or time to do this, you can outsource the process through a free service such as yahoo or listbot. You provide the content, they provide the list-management and distribution.

[Hammerz]

Hey, Backend Guru!

 

Rock Sign

 

I read your advice for newletter users, and it made me think. (Always worthwhile, but hard to do!)

 

The folks on my various newletter lists lists are either members of the church where I am pastor, my family members, friends back in the USA (I live in Taiwan), or missionaries around the world. MANY of them are fairly "low tech" folks, so the one time I attempted to use "opt-in" or "opt-out" with them, many were confused about what was going on and, in a few cases, aggitated by the process. Mad!!! Simply didn't "get it!"

 

So....I my ongoing practice is to remove folks when they write and ask me to do so (which happens from time to time) and to make sure that ANYONE I add to a list knows from whom they are receiving the mailing, for what reason and how to be removed.

 

My max newsletter list size is 300 -- the others are anywhere from 5 to 100+ persons. NONE of them are public, NONE allow automatic subscription, and I am the ONLY moderator or poster.

 

If I should ever decide to do a moderated "public" list, I would definitely use more conventional means to allow folks to subscribe and unsubscribe to it at will.

However, it seems that I am behaving responsibly without resorting to potentially confusing or irritating methods such as "opt-in" or "opt-out."

 

Whaddayathink?

 

Chuck in Taiwan

 

PS/ I'm wondering what prompted your advice "out of the blue." Are TCH lists being abused? If so, how do you deal with that more directly?

[TCH-Dick]

As long as your mailings are not being reported as SPAM, your doing something right. We have a LOT of members that send out newsletters and a lot of them get reported to us as SPAM.

 

Theres two main things you have to do to make your mailing list legit.

 

1.) A person has to CHOOSE to receive your newsletter, if a person has to register on a site and by default they are automticlly signed up for your newsletter, thats no good. Even though they didnt uncheck the option to receive the mail, they still havent given permission.

 

2.) There has to be an easy way for a person to opt out if they decide they dont want to receive the e-mail anymore. This Opt out requirement is a double edged sword though, A real Spammer puts the opt out link in their e-mail, and when you click on it to be removed all you have done is verify that the e-mail address they sent it to was good and opened yourself up for a LOT more spam. There a program called MailWasher, that lets you view your mail without downloading it to your computer, then it gives you the option to receive or bounce the e-mail. If you bounce a spam e-mail the spammer sees its a bad e-mail address and takes that address off your list.

 

Now, as to why I posted this, yes, we get a TON of spam complaints, most are valid e-mails or newsletters, but after so many complaints the sending server can get blacklisted as a spammer. Since most of our customers are on shared servers, if a server IP gets blacklisted every person on that server is blocked from sending mail through their domain.

[T-4-L]

I downloaded MailWasher about a month ago and would recommend it to anybody, it saves me a lot of time by not having to wade through tons of spam everyday. Thumbs Up