Email Marketing Senders Get Slimed
Here’s a scary, slimy story that happened on Halloween.
They came from
Usually I write this off to lack of interest, a language barrier or inbox overload. But since 100% hadn’t confirmed, I decided to dig deeper.
To intrigue the unverified leads, I considered sending them a light and friendly email suggesting they visit my site or blog. While I almost never write to unverified leads [unless the name comes from a friend who needs a nudge], I felt like in this case I might reroute alternative readers.
Before I went into compose mode, I checked one last place – the verification email sent to them upon the first opt-in request. Shocking, absolutely shocking, is the only way to describe what I kept opening up. Slimy spam dripped on my screen, but where was it oozing from? How in the world did I send that?
I frantically emailed a quick support request. Then, picked up the phone and dialed AWeber’s toll-free number. How did those messages get in there? The spammers sent them to my opt-in email address? Good thing I waited on the friendly email, huh?
Turns out nothing stops spammers from sending you anything they want. The worst part? Your list report gets a bit bloated by names that never intend to get your bonus – or your newsletter. As my AWeber CSR told me, having a double opt-in insures that they’ll never make it on your list and their name will expire in 30 days. Okay, thanks for getting my hopes up that a new group found me. Now you know if an email address isn’t verified within a few days, it’s probably sent by an autospambot somewhere. Just don’t open the email they send you – unless you want to get slimed.
English
This makes no sense. You are talking about spammy content of the verification email that you send out. Isn’t that under your control???
Thanks for your comment Peter. Apologies for the confusion – you made the same first assumption that I did.
Yes, I do control the verification email that comes from me. But, here’s an example of what comes up when I checked the verfication email click to see option on a spammer’s address profile . . . the confusion clears up when you see that this is the original email the lead mailed to my list.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: “spam email sender”
Subject: AWeber listname
## Below is a forwarded email from your AWeber
## account listname. It is the original email that the
## lead emailed to listnameATaweber.com
Hi ya listname
guess what? nevermind, your happy with your tiny cook
http://www.spamurl
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note that some words as well as the name of the list is changed. This is, obviously, not a typical verification email.
Barbara
Ahh ok so that’s what they send in by email to your autoresponder’s email address.
I would recommend to use the double optin and don’t spend 1 minute worrying about those.
Now and then I freak out when people don’t confirm or they use addresses from “disposable” accounts.
I’ve considered blocking those domains but why bother. There’s no upside and a very small downside to doing that – some people might come back with a valid primary email address if they like your content.
So I just let em all walk by and stick their head in the door 🙂