Hi all! Yes, I’m on vacation but I need to talk to everyone today about sending out e-mail blasts using their website admin console. This primarly affects osCommerce Creloaded sites that are using the Newsletter Manager tool. We are asking that you consider moving your  mailing list to a third-party like Constant Contact or YMLP. 

The problem with using the Newsletter Manager to send e-mails to all your customers is it usually results in a lot of  e-mails being returned to us due to bad e-mail addresses, spam blockers, etc. Many of you have been in business for several years, so a lot of your customer accounts are old/outdated and contain e-mail addresses that are no longer valid. This gets us in to a lot of trouble!

We’ve really had to start monitoring this because our server keeps getting blacklisted by ISPs, especially Yahoo and Comcast.  When this happens, they start to reject all e-mail from all sites on our server – not just the person who sent out the e-mail blast. So please take a moment and look at a third-party service for e-mail marketing. They are not very expensive and it really is a more effective method for reaching your customers.

Another point to keep in mind is that the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires the each message include a means to “opt out” (i.e., decline future e-mail from the same source). The Newsletter Manager does not offer this option – we don’t want anyone getting in trouble for breaking anit-spam legislation!

If you have any questions, please let me know – I will be glad to talk you through this. And please don’t think I’m singling anyone out. We had several people do e-mail blasts over the weekend, resulting in over 800 bounced e-mail. Thank you for your cooperation.

A..