We all know that email is probably todays most popular way to advertise. Every day our inboxes are filled with messages from people who want our business--whether we asked for the contact or not. Email is todays biggest communication factor; but why shouldnt it be Its all but free to use, and its almost instantaneous.
But there is one problem with advertising via email that you may not think of very often: blacklisting. All it takes is one complaint, and your ISP or domain name can be put on someones black list. If youre on the black list, your emails are not getting through--and neither is your advertising message.
So how big of a problem is this Well, AOL, one of the worlds biggest Internet service providers, winds up blocking a whopping 80% of messages to its subscribers due to blacklising. Your email could be the most legitimate message ever sent, but if one person forgets they signed up or decides to complain, you could be blacklisted. And for your business, the resulting slump in sales can be devastating.
What is a blacklist, exactly A blacklist is a database of known Internet addresses (or IPs) used by individuals or companies sending spam. Various ISPs and bandwidth providers subscribe to these blacklist databases in order to filter out spam sent across their network or to their subscribers. Companies like AOL, MSN, and Yahoo all have very strict policies on spam, so many well-intended, legitimate emails never get through.
So how can you be sure you havent been blacklisted Unfortunately, you really cant be 100% sure. You may be on someones black list and not even know it, and be added to and removed from black lists at the drop of a hat. The only way to prevent being blacklisted unfairly is to use todays technology to keep track of it all. There is cutting-edge software technology available that checks all the major black lists like Spamcop, MAPS, and SPAMHaus to ensure your domain or ISP hasnt been added.
Taking a few moments to understand and solve your potential blacklisting problem can mean a world of difference in your bottom line.
About The Author
Author Karen Fegarty is with MailWorkZ the creator of Black List Monitor-- advanced service that continuously checks all the major blacklists for you, and then some. Dont be treated unfairly! Keep a handle on who may have you blacklisted. Get a free trial and find out more at ;
Things just got a lot hotter in the hyper-competitive world of online email providers.
In response to Googles announcement that their soon-to-be-launched Gmail service will offer users 1 gigabyte of email storage, Yahoo! announced an upgrade of their free email service to allow users 100MB of free email storage along with other enhancements.
Microsofts Hotmail will surely also announce a free upgrade in email storage space.
On the surface it might just appear like a simple case of one-upmanship, but it actually represents major forces digging in online and preparing to do battle.
It appears Yahoo! simply wanted to take the issue of email storage space off the table as a consideration for users as to which email service to choose.
Google enjoyed considerable media and public attention over the past few weeks with the media marveling at how Google intended to give hundreds of megabytes more space to its users than Yahoo! or Hotmail.
With this move, Yahoo! made storage a non-issue, but the real war has only just begun.
Email ranks as the number one most popular online activity according to virtually any survey you care to read.
When people go online, they spend the single biggest chunk of their time sending, receiving, and reading email.
Online email providers understand that eyeballs on a page looking at advertising and responding to offers is what makes them money.
By increasing loyalty among email users in order to repeatedly draw them back to the same website (often several times a day), email service providers like Yahoo!, Hotmail and Google can keep people looking at revenue generating ads.
Despite the best efforts of government regulators, private organizations, software filters, ISPs and others, over half of all email sent online rates as unsolicited commercial email (SPAM).
Besides storage space, Google, Yahoo! and Hotmail will start claiming that their spam filters rate better than the rest.
These online powerhouses hope to attract users with the promise of cutting down and even eliminating the avalanche of get-rich-quick, pornography, and ink-jet cartridge offers (among others) that bombard virtually anyone with an email account more than 15 minutes old.
This will, however, lead to another problem that many of them wont talk about, which involves filtering legitimate email as spam.
Unfortunately, the sword cuts both ways on this issue.
So where does it all end Never! Hotmail will enter the fray with expanded storage capacity as well as the promise of less spam and a more friendly interface to make your email life even easier.
Yahoo! and Hotmail will most likely copy Google and start serving context sensitive advertising based on the content of each email message as it get viewed.
Privacy advocates will weigh in to claim that all of the filtering and serving of ads based on an email messages content violates our rights to privacy and heralds the arrival of Big Brother.
But all this jockeying for position and enticing users from one email service to another actually represents a great boon for the average Internet user.
It will force three of the Webs biggest players to wake up and improve their services after 2 or 3 years of business as usual and we can all expect a few valuable innovations to result.
About The Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr-e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
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