Internet Business and Personal Success

I’ve been reminded recently that sometimes what seems like a great idea, can totally backfire.  You may have experienced something similar.

My Great Idea was to use different email addresses for everything I sign up for, whether online or off.  Each domain can have a “catch-all” email address where all email which doesn’t have a corresponding email account can be sent to.  This way I can effectively “key” every email address I give out, and determine if it’s being spread to other sites without permission, etc..  It also allows for very easy sorting in my email software of choice (Thunderbird).

All was well until about 2 years ago when my host at the time disallowed this functionality for all accounts.  It seems that their servers were being overrun with spam, partly due to this setting.   No problem, I was about ready to explore new hosting anyway, so I moved someplace which still allowed my “great idea”.

Well..  Over the past year, I’ve seen first hand what what the prior host have been talking about with an overload of spam.   You see, these automated spam programs will often use a random domain as the “sender” for their email.  So, even though an email doesn’t originate from your account, it still has a return/sender’s address from your domain.  Worse yet, it makes up new email addresses when doing this.

Why does that matter?  Well, every time an email blast gets sent by one of these programs, I end up getting several hundred (or even thousand) bounce messages from the systems of email addresses which don’t exist anymore, etc..  Some months this happens several time, others not at all.

There’s more… but I’m really here to rant a bit about the process of cleaning this up.  Since I have literally hundreds of these made up email addresses, it’s an ongoing process of updating everything to use one of a small handful of descriptive, but managable addresses.  Should be relatively simple.  Every time I get an email, just go to the link at the bottom to change my address in their system (or just unsubscribe).

Yet, almost half the time I either have to jump through hoops to make the change, or am only presented with the option of unsubscribing.  That’s insane!  Imagine someone moving their Internet provider, and not being able to move their subscriptions over.  The result is lost business, and a very sour taste in their mouth.

The worst of these are certain sites “powered by Infusionsoft” which apparently doesn’t have a single link to unsubscribe OR change user options.  The business owner must setup two links in the email footer… One for unsubscribe requests, and another for option changes. That would be fine if these business owners would provide both links.  often only the unsubscribe option exists.   So that’s what I do.  If it’s somethng I really want to track, I’ll sometimes resubscribe, but not always.

Other programs will require me to “log in” or otherwise  waste a lot of time making the change.  I only do this for relatively important sites.  All of the rest will simply get bounce notices when I make the switch away from the “catch-all” email addresses.

Sometimes, they allow me to change my name,  but not my email address!  How whacked is that?  While my brother actually legally changed his name, and women often change their name after getting married, I suspect email address changes happen a heck of a lot more often.

The simplest?  Everyone who uses Aweber, GetResponseor or 1ShoppingCart. The process is one or two clicks, and entering the new address.  Just like it should be.

So before you get your whole autoresponder or broadcast email list going, be sure to consider this simple usability issue.   It will reduce frustration from your customers, and possibly keep them for unsubscribing or falling off when their email address changes.

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Yes, this is going to be one of those posts which happen from time to time on blogs that aren’t updated in a while.

But… It will not make a feeble attempt to explain away the reasons, or apologize.

Quite simply, I’ve been focusing on other projects.  I’ll probably talk about them here in the future, but for now they’re a secret.

It’s likely I’ll reinvent this site into something a little more fun, and include more personal info and news.   If you care to tune in, great.  If not, that’s fine too.

For more posts like I’ve done here in the past, I expect to start updating my other blog site: www.successunstuck.com with the same sort of real-life examples of self development for personal and business success that I’ve done here.

Additionally, I intend to get into the nitty gritty of Internet Business on an all new site devoted to more specific steps to profiting online.  It’s unlikely (for a long while at least) to be as comprehensive as Terry Dean’s Internet Lifestyle Retirement System Course, so if you really want to fast track your online business, just get this course (yes, I did), and do what it tells you.  Let me know if you get it via the link above, and I’ll send some bonuses your way.

Also, thanks to everyone who left comments this Summer.  It’s good to see people still reading and making use of the content found here–even if it’s just for some back-link luv (you didn’t think I’d notice, did you?)  Feel free to keep it up, but you may have noticed, I don’t generally approve obviously generic comments, nor ones that appear to be machine generated.  Relative and useful comments only please.

-Tim

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