Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Spam Filters
You've likely been plagued to some extent by
junk email that
unscrupulous marketers send
indiscriminately to millions of
email
accounts. Unfortunately, the more Internet
marketing
you do, the more spam you'll be
deleting from your Inbox.
I've had as many as
300 uninvited emails show up in a single
day.
That's more than frustrating, it's
maddening!
Fortunately, more and more ISP's are
fighting back by using
spam filters to lessen
the amount of junk that reached
their
customers. From that perspective, spam
filters are a welcome
addition to the
Internet world.
Although I'm thrilled that filters cut
down on Inbox
garbage, and save time
anddelete' finger overuse; they also
present
a potentially serious problem to honest
email
marketers.
If your outgoing messages aren't reaching
your ezine
subscribers, that means they're
not getting what they signed
up for, and
you're losing income. That's a problem.
For example, until recently, my Net
Profits Coach eZine
messages had a fairly
consistent rate of
undelivered
messages, between 1.3 and
1.5 percent. Over the last
couple of
months however, I noticed that the number
of
'undeliverables' was slowly but steadily
increasing .
One may think that 1.3 percent isn't too
high a number, and
not worth your concern.
However, if you're the one 'percent'
eagerly
anticipating the arrival of your favorite
ezine
which then doesn't arrive, that number
takes on a much
larger meaning.
When the NPC's percentage of undelivered
messages reached an
all time high of 2.6, and
hundreds of subscribers missed
out, I knew it
was time to tackle the problem.
Fortunately, my answer was close at
hand.
The best way to avoid getting caught up
in the filters, is
to use a list server that
incorporates a spam
analyzer to check your
messages. Both Aweber and Ken Evoy's
Site
Build It! use the Spam Assasin(tm)
technology. Spam
Assasin(tm) is a
scoring system that instantly lets you
know
whether your ezine message might be
filtered. The analyzer
goes through your
message and then returns a report
that
displays key areas that might be caught
in filters.
Most ISP's using the Spam
Assasin(tm) software allow
anything with a
score under 5 to pass through.
Aweber's
autoresponder service flags messages
with scores over 5 by
highlighting them in
red. The red flag is linked to a list
of
terms and phrases that the software found
objectionable,
giving you the opportunity to
refine your message and reduce
your
score.
Using the analyzer made such a difference
to the NPC's rate
of undeliverables. I was
able to get it down to 0.6 percent,
and I
know that if I pay more attention to
avoiding
spam-type phrases, that number will
go even lower.
So, are your messages reaching your
customers, or are
they getting caught up in
spam filters? Don't sweat great
drops of
blood over your hard work and then let it
become
cyberspatial flotsam. Use an
analyzer.
As the old saying goes - the mail must go
through!
Author's Resource: Article by Rosalind Gardner,
author of the best-selling "Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online". To learn how you too can succeed in Internet and affiliate marketing, please visit
http://NetProfitsToday.com
(To use this article on your website please review Reprint Guidelines.)
© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All
Rights Reserved.
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