If you have ever wondered how blogs get those cool Technorati buttons on their site, here it is.

Create a log in, or log in to Technorati, then go thru the “claim blog” process. Once you are done it will provide you with the code to add the buttons to your site.

Hope this helps! = Chris Lang

Being the most prolific email authority on email delivery (I have to be #2), Stefan Pollard of Email on Click Z is followed avidly by many, especially myself.

Marketing Sherpa went into very in depth detail in suggesting that we all use user email whitelist instructions on our sites. You can view Marketing Sherpa’a email whitelist instructions.

In fact this article goes into how Email Management is Lacking and not taking advantage of landing pages throughout the subscription process.

Now I asked Stefan to take a look at my whitelist email instructions and the whitelist email generator that built them.

Here is his response and mine is below it, so read on!

Thanks for the reply here Stefan but I do have to disagree with you on the point that our subscribers are more advanced than I believe.

The one thing I have learned is that you must construct your instructions for anything to include the lowest common denominator in any type of instructions. Look at the questions that come in from someone that tries to download a report to their own machine. Most Internet users cannot even download a file to their own file structure, manage to find it and open the PDF file afterwards. You have to provide explicit instructions on how to do this so you are not constantly having to answer support emails.

When it comes to email it can be even worse. Your email can easily end up in the spam folder until a new subscriber finds it there, opens it and then whitelists you to enable HTML and clickable links. I reported on this a year ago when Hotmail was the first to disable clickable links and HTML. AOL, Gmail and Yahoo have followed suit.

After reading your email Stefan, I decided to go back and add a line stating that “Due to the overzealous filtering by ISPs you may have to look in your spam folder and recover my email.”

Do you have any suggestions on how I could word this better? It should portray that it is not there because I am spammer, it is there because the ISPs filters get carried away. Also what other suggestions do you have for my readers that could help us get over the hump of a new subscriber trusting us and whitelisting our email addresses?

Also as far as FBLs go I totally agree! I have a complete list of 10 ISPs, their FBL links and how to use them, but I have to save something for the email delivery book!

Of course I invite all your comments below. – Chris Lang

Yeah, I hate to tell you but your email delivery is VERY fragile. There are quite a few things that can cause disaster in email delivery, losses in profits, subscribers and even your domain. Take a look at Lyris report finds your email getting junked. It is getting worse and not any better. Hotmail and Yahoo junked opted-in e-mails about 20% of the time.

Idiots who click the spam button

Most people on the Internet view “email marketers” as spammers. Just mention at a social gathering that you send any type of email and the first thing out so some dumbasses mouth will be “So you are a spammer….” or “So you send spam…”

Just look at what my friend on Digg just posted and read the comments, Optimize Email Delivery with Best Practice Strategies. That was me that said “RTFA first” and I had to hold back a bit. Flame somebody on Digg and they will go to your profile and bury all your articles, accuse you of spam and get your URL blocked.

This is the mind set of most people that read our emails. If you send email you must on some level be a spammer. This translates directly to clicking the spam button just because someone did not understand your email or they felt it crossed the line of information too being commercial.

Migrating to a new server

Moving to a new server with a new IP address can be a disaster. SpamCop (now used by Microsoft), Hotmail, Windows Live Mail and a number of others all sandbox your email for up to six months under a new email server IP address.

You cannot set up a new box and start sending to your recipients like you would form the location you newsletter was previously sent from.

Adding poorly configured MTA’s and bad Authentication

I cannot tell you how many times I have helped someone who is not getting much email delivered and it turns out that their DKIM or DomainKeys authentication is not working at the ISP in question.

They tell me “Oh yeah, we already set that up and it is working fine, it passed all the tests.”

Here is a little trick. Send an email from your MTA to a Yahoo address that you have access to. Now open the email and view the header. If it says “passed” under the DKIM or DK test, you are fine. However most times it is not passing Yahoo’s test even though it came back good in the online tests.

Contact you MTA provider and you may have to possibly update your DNS entry or your MTA’s milter.

ISPs suddenly start canning your email for no reason

So let’s say Yahoo starts holding your email in it’s queue for four hours for no reason. They have been doing that lately, allot.

You keep getting “not delivered” messages so you keep resending to Yahoo. And then you resend, AGAIN. You are only hurting your reputation when you try to resend to often. When you see odd things and weird 451 emails coming back from an ISP don’t keep resending out of frustration and possible profit loss.

Stop what you are doing and find out if the problem is on their end or yours. A simple Google search of the problem can usually tell you that others are having the same problem or not.

Not using double opt in for new subscribers

Double opt in prevents spam complaints. Spam complaints are the result of a recipient clicking the “this is spam button” and will get you blocked faster than anything else. A visitor cannot misspell their email address and send someone else your emails with double opt in.

Double opt in also saves your email reputation because you are not bouncing emails to bad addresses. Those same misspelled emails that get the spam button clicked can bounce when the recipient does not exist. ISPs keep track of bounced emails and the server it is sent from. The more bounces, the lower your email reputation score.

The very first time someone clicks the “this is spam” button on an email you sent without double opt in can get you banned by the receiving ISP. Your host may delete your domain and you are going to definitely get listed on RBLs (real time blacklists).

Sure you can triple your opt in rate by not using double opt in, but all it takes is a five or six spam complaints and you are history! NO site, NO domain, GONE. Forever.

The Bottom Line

If you do not make these simple mistakes you will go a long way in avoiding spam filters and deliver more email. At the same time you will not be destroying your email reputation that you have hopefully spent alot of time building.