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Yahoos at Yahoo!

by Paul Myers
9 replies
http://www.thisistrue.com/blog-yahoo...isis_ever.html

Randy Cassingham's "This is True" got blocked at Yahoo. Users who had to confirm their subscriptions decided they'd rather hit the "This is Spam" button than unsubscribe. A small handful of them got the newsletter blocked for the other 15,000 subscribers Randy had at the service.

I firmly believe that these services should track confirmations, and nuke the accounts of people who report solicited mail as spam.

This is ridiculous. Randy is one of the very few publishers I know who hates spam as much as I do. (He's also one of the people I watch for cool writing techniques. Dude's a genius with the clever turn of phrase.)

I have recommended True here often in the past. It's a great read, and a great example of marketing a premium (read: paid) upgrade version of a free publication.

Randy was the very first person to sell paid subscriptions to an email newsletter.

If your audience likes entertainment, of the witty and thought-provoking variety, help him and them out, and tell them about True. http://www.thisistrue.com

And tell them not to bother if they use a Yahoo address.


Paul
#yahoo #yahoos
  • Profile picture of the author Jelasco
    Yahoo also blocks emails from this forum.

    I agree, it's pretty dumb for them to block the newsletter from all those people just because a few others hit the spam button (which may have been accidental).
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      It's not dumb of Yahoo. They try to keep the thresholds sane and allow for mistakes and morons. Unfortunately, morons are always more persistent than smart people. It's their only effective tactic.


      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
        I've been subscribed to This Is True on Paul's recommendation for
        a long time. He's right, it's a good read.

        John
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        John's Internet Marketing News, Views & Reviews: John Taylor Online
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        • Profile picture of the author ExRat
          Hi Paul,

          Unless I'm mistaken, reading the update (via your link - scroll down to the yellow box) -

          I heard from a senior tech at Yahoo at the end of the day on August 5: "Your IP [address] should have no issues delivering now." Short, sweet, to the point. Now the work begins to restore all the "held" subscribers, and with luck we'll have all 15,000 back by Friday's issue.
          Happy ending? Looks like people-power can actually work against the big-dogs...

          Signature


          Roger Davis
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          • Profile picture of the author mikelee
            glade to hear that all is well that ends well now...

            mikelee
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  • Profile picture of the author Chipt
    From personal experience and hearing of the drama that's been unfairly inflicted on others here and in other places...

    As far as I'm concerned, it appears that WAY TOO MANY COMPANIES put forth BASICALLY ZERO EFFORT to validate such false spam complaints from the idiots and problem causers...

    Which still makes this underhanded tactic the easiest and best way for your competitors to sink your ship without firing a single shot...

    All they have to do is send a #^&#$($(## false BS email or 2 and you're bent over like a sapling in the wind...

    Which is ABSURD and WRONG in my opinion...

    Chip Tarver
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    • Profile picture of the author Tirmizi
      they definatly needs to come up with some new machanism of blocking .. cause this is just ill logical ... with the amount of spam people usually recieve in their email ... alot of time you just delete some relevent newsletter too put that as spam , i know i've done it ... so this is not the perfect criteria i guess ...
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      • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
        First, a technical correction: "True" was temp-failed, not blocked. At another service, that would not have been the case. It would have been blocked.

        This probably means nothing to most of you, but it's a good thing, and Yahoo should get credit both for their more sensible handling of such things and for correcting the issue when they became aware of it.

        These sorts of systems work well most of the time. The providers try to keep the levels balanced, to avoid legitimate publishers from getting nailed like this. Most of the time, it works. "True," covering more controversial issues, will tend to get more nitwits hitting the spam button because they're pissed about something said in an issue.

        The biggest problem I see with this is the idea that, "Spam is whatever the person getting the mail wants to bitch about. Or just misreports."


        Paul
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        Stop by Paul's Pub - my little hangout on Facebook.

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  • Profile picture of the author Joseph Ratliff
    Just my opinion...but to mark a message as SPAM should produce a prompt that states "Are you sure you want to mark this as SPAM? If this was an email subscription that you participated in at some point, please be sure to use that vendor's unsubscribe instructions in every email sent. --Yahoo Team"

    That's the gist any how.
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