“Ben, why do you block AOL, MSN and Hotmails?”
A very good question — and timely, too, as recently I decided to change this policy due to it outliving its usefulness.
Here’s the dealy-ho:
A few years ago I noticed a weird trend.
For some reason, whether sending personal email across the house (we had MSN at the time) or via my aweber account, a lot of people using AOL, MSN and hotmail addresses were not getting my emails.
This wasn’t the case with everyone.
But it happened enough.
Both with free info and customer service emails.
It’s not a huge problem with free tips.
But it IS a problem for delivering paid products.
So what I did was use aweber’s blocking feature to block AOL, MSN and hotmail emails. The way I see it, if you use those emails you’re not going to receive the information you asked for, anyway.
However, here’s the rub:
I don’t know if this is the case anymore.
Mayhaps spam filters are getting less aggressive.
Or maybe they’re more intelligent.
But with my 1ShoppingCart email program, people get their emails at those blocked addresses all the time, with little or no problem (if anything, yahoo emails get lost…)
So I decided it’s time to change my policy.
We’ll see what happens…
Anyway, here’s the take-away:
Email is ALWAYS in flux.
It’s one reason I’m doing an ongoing hardcopy newsletter just about email, so my subscribers and I can stay informed of changes, what’s working (what’s not), what spam filters are up to, etc.
For details sally forth over to:
Ben Settle
