What An Aweber Phone Rep Just Told Me About Yahoo Just

i recently heard from the grapevine that Aweber has their servers blocked by Yahoo or something.. This came up when i was chatting over with another IMer.. Someone can confirm?

honestly guys, this is fairly normal in the world of autoresponders.

i have been doing business online for 15 years and over the course of that time, i have managed to obtain 7 different AR services and countless server side scripts that send email from servers.

deliverability is in a constant state of change. none of the AR services is perfect. they all get blocked from various isp from time to time. its just the nature of the game so to speak.

i heard about this issue several days ago. here is what i have found.
1. no new double optin confirmations are getting to yahoo.
2. a few (25%) of single optin welcome message for new subscribers are getting through.
3. most of my existing yahoo subscribers who are single optin are still getting the broadcasts.
4. a lower percentage of existing yahoo subscribers who are double optin are getting broadcasts

and here is another thing. by using a "from" or "reply" to address that has never sent a broadcast to yahoo subscribers via aweber, i get totally blocked. but when using my normal from / reply address that yahoo has seen before with my aweber account i seem to be getting through at a decent rate.

and to the OP who seems to think the aweber representative said to much. here is my take. i would much rather have a company be honest about things and assure me they are working to resolve the issue than to act as if there is no problem when there clearly seems to be some issue.

if your site is down and you call your web host would you rather them say "we have no issue" when they know there is one. or would you rather them say, "yes we had a hardware failure and we are working to fix the problem"

every AR will have issues like this from time to time. dont panic, and be thankful you are working with an AR who is reputable and who i am fairly confident will be able to get this issue resolved.

as a side note, i have heard from an insider that a big part of the problem seems to be the fact that aweber had some accounts compromised in the last few months with some pretty sophisticated phishing scams. once these unscrupulous people gained access to the accounts, they didn't abide by any rules or code of conduct and that has caused aweber some problems.

Great info. I don't see where the OP thought they A weber rep said too much.

Maybe too much reading between the lines.

Soooooooooooo any solution to this? Or another autoresponder company to use.

Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail blocking emails sent from AR services like AWeber...

This is the biggest threat to email marketing in my opinion.

I have a feeling that it COULD kill email marketing eventually.

I've thought that for a while now.

I'm not saying it will, but I'm saying that it could happen.

But it's good to not rely 100% on e-mail marketing because of that reason I think.

Really? Mmmm, interesting. I've been weighing the pros and cons of different autoresponders lately, wondering what is best to sign up with. It's funny you should mention Constant Contact, I know many network marketers who use it, and are sometimes not too ethical with what they send out.

when using a self hosted solution, the costs can get very high very quickly if your using something like smpt.com have a look at there pricing

pricing link

to go with autoresponseplus.com is pretty simple. but if you host on a shared server and dont use something like smpt.com then your deliver-ability will be dependent on what others do on your shared server. not a good situation at all

now you could get a dedicated server to host your script and send them mails from there, but if you get blacklisted, you have to figure out how to resolve the issue. and if aweber has trouble getting yahoo to unlbock them, what do you think your chances are.

there are major issues with either, and to be honest, the technical issue with running a self hosted solution half as good as aweber for several years is easier said than done. not saying it cant be done, but it wont be cheap or easy at all.

these "rolling blackouts" have been happening for years. they are just part of the game. i dont know of an AR that has been able to avoid them at some point.

There are no alternatives to email. The Internet runs on email,
so all the ideas that marketers have to look for alternative means
of communication is just talk. Whatever you do online, even
to get an account with any social network requires that you
have an email address.

Email marketing is not going anywhere and if delivery from these
companies disappear then marketers have to get their EMAILS
through in another way.

So many times when a new technology comes on board (like
RSS many moons ago) marketers talk about death to email.
Email ain't going nowhere.

So this a a CRISIS situation if it cannot be solved soon.

-Ray Edwards

With all the hype and talk these days about mobile text marketing, I'm surprised more people aren't using texts to send a weekly update to their lists. It's worked for me and many of my clients are reinforcing their AR messages with a quick weekly update. I've got several political candidates who have a huge list of local supporters who are on their AR lists with AWeber but their greatest tool is still the CELL phone.

heck i remember a few years ago when gmail blocked emails from yahoo servers. this went on for a couple of days. no AR involved. it was just gmail blocking any emails from yahoo.

these guys all use sophisticated algorithms to attempt to block spam. they have to.

if you send email from anywhere, you will be blocked by someone at some point. we have all had personal and business emails hit the spam filters or be blocked all together. it really is just a part of doing business on the internet

Isn't it all cyclical?

I know that your AR account gets hosted on a server along with several others... so your email will share the same IP as several others.

Now if another marketer using that server, sharing the same IP as you starts sending out spam and such, that IP gets blacklisted by certain email providers i.e. Yahoo, Hotmail etc., which means their emails, your emails and everyone else's emails don't get through.

The AR (and Aweber definitely, as is my understanding) is in a constant process of culling these spam accounts and get the IPs whitelisted again. If your emails aren't getting through, someone's ruined it for everyone but it's only temporary.

I think you can negotiate to get on more established, higher quality servers after you've been with the AR company for some time though, eliminating the issue.

Hi Guys,

Is this something that just recently happened? I noticed that over the past few days .. since last week I noticed a huge drop in my clicks per email I sent out... lower CTR and open rate. wondering if this is the cause.

Im confused as to why this is so shocking :confused:

As long as people keep blasting junk out every single day, by junk, I mean those pre-written spammy looking affiliate 'emails' for the latest push button frauduct promising the reader millions at the click of a button, expect this to get worse.

Especially with headlines such as;

RE: Your commision/sale/order
GURANTEED make $xxxxxx at the click of a button

The list goes on.........

I'm surprised Aweber et al. haven't been permanently blacklisted yet.

-Chris

David and Shaun - just a shout out in appreciation for the solid tips and advice in this thread.

A few years ago (way back in internet time), my business had our own in-house server rack hosting our web services and delivering email over a T1. We also had 3 different co-located servers collecting leads from various offers that were synced daily to our custom-built FileMaker Pro CRM. I say all of this only to point out that I understand the pain of self-hosted email all too well.

From my perspective, I think David has it absolutely right when he says that for the majority of individual, independent solo-entrepreneurs and info marketers, a 3rd party AR service is their best bet. They have the experience, the infrastructure and the clout to deal with all the things you will not have the experience, infrastructure or clout to deal with.

And if costs for most folks would range from $20/month to a hundred or two depending on the size of their list... from where I sit, I say "GOOD DEAL".

But then I also know Sean's point of view well (as I surmise you do too, David).

Personally, I'm really interested in Amazon's SES and have recently been testing SMTP.com and I'm about to try SendGrid too:

Product Pricing | SendGrid

One of things I'm looking to do is increase deliverability for auto-generated responses from my websites/scripts. Things that we all generate constantly - WP user notifications, download links from RAP/et al.

One of the most common customer service issues I see are those "I never got my link" type help desk tickets and emails. Sometimes, it can be a real challenge to get users their information from your otherwise automated systems... a real profit stealer.

So, fixing that issue and having all my notifications from my systems come from a service where the primary purpose is deliverability makes a lot of sense. And the costs are NOT that high if you're only dealing with notices, instead of email.

10,000 relays for $15/month.

Is making a significant percentage of your customer support request VANISH worth $15 a month you? It is to me.

Anyway, this has been a good thread fellas. Nice!

Best,

Brian McLeod

hey guys, just got off a chat with aweber, and no real big news on the issue. i talked with a supervisor who seemed to be very honest and up front about the issue.

he says they are not totally blocked, which i kinda already knew from my tests. but that almost all email to yahoo is being heavily filtered and thus taking much longer to reach the inbox if its not filtered. he admits that more than 70% of out going mail from aweber is being blocked by yahoo currently.

but the part i found really very interesting was this. after the live chat, i got the option to have the email transcripts of the chat mailed to me. i of course intentionally put in a yahoo address.

guess what...they dont send those emails from their servers. it came from authsmtp.com.

the live chat software did appear to me to be hosted on their server, but the email transcripts definitely did not come from their server.

this made me start investigating. their billing and other communication emails do seem to come from their server.

so it was more of just an interesting find to see that an email company uses one of the other solutions Shaun mentioned already to send their email for some things.

that tells me they believe in their solution, but think it prudent to have a backup ready just in case. just smart business.

update: and the help desk responses from aweber seem to be coming from zendesk.com email server.

To me it tells me they KNOW they can not trust their servers to deliver the emails they send.

I don't see how if they send their emails on servers OTHER than their own could make a person think that Awebet believes in their solution. To me it shows the exact opposite.

Hmmm... interesting post. I use aWeber & haven't had any problems so far but I'll be keeping a closer eye on it.

Anyone who thinks this is unique to Aweber hasn't used or tested enough autoresponder services. I've used Aweber, Getresponse, 1ShoppingCart, Inmica Mail, E-mail Aces, have had self-hosted solutions, to name a few, running weekly delivery rate testing at one point in my IM business.

This happens to all 3rd party providers at one time or another. It's like the Google Algo changes. They happen hundreds of times a year yet something like "Panda" or what not get the most publicity, but it neglects the reality that stuff like this happens all the time, which is one of the reasons why you pay to have someone handle these issues in the background.

Though Aweber needs to do a much better job of informing their users of these type of issues.

There's actually some very good information in this thread, which is pretty rare for an autoresponder thread. lol

RoD

Yahoo and their mail servers have long been a problem for me, and I'm not talking about Aweber here.

At the office, we have one customer that's on Yahoo that cannot receive eMail from us. I had to set up a Yahoo account just to send and receive mail from this one customer. That's from our regular eMail on our own domain, and it's not blacklisted anywhere, so why the mail won't get to Yahoo, I have no idea.

On another domain, I was exchanging eMail with a customer, when suddenly she stopped replying. After a few days, I received a message from her through our contact form. Apparently, in the middle of our eMail exchange, Yahoo had decided to stop delivering my messages to her. I had to set up a Yahoo eMail just to finish talking with her to complete the order.

On the same domain, I have a freelancer I work who uses Yahoo. Never have a problem sending to her.

But with others, also on Yahoo, I do have problems. Doesn't make sense.

Unfortunately, this is what happens when IMers ABUSE their lists and destroy the credibility of an autoresponder service. I'd have to say, autoresponder services are not the best businesses with longevity and its never a great model if your reputation is dependant on other peoples reputation.

If your an internet marketer who has respect for your list and only uses it to send out valuable content and your list is very responsive then you should get yourself on your own server and stop piggy-backing on the reputation of other businesses because this'll end up hurting you in the long run. A good responsive list of subscribers/customers is your biggest asset as an internet marketer so you should never be afraid to spend some money on it. In fact, I would even go so far as to say in some cases the list is more important than product.

Unfortunately, most marketers build throw-away lists that are about as responsive as an old clapped out car and its these types of marketers that hurt everyone else.
Most people who build lists tend to send out as many affiliate products as possible in the shortest time possible and they wonder why their conversions are so low and why autoresponders get banned. If I owned an autoresponder business I would seriously consider only allowing users to send one email to each member of their list once per week. Anything more and they'd have to pay more and prove they was providing a professional email course.

I wonder if this is related in anyway to the changes Yahoo made to their email. Everyone had to upgrade their Yahoo email to a new version this month. And if memory serves, one of the perks of the new version was going to be better control over spam.

So, is it time to change to self-hosted auto-responders? I hope not.

I bet ya AWEBER has lot of cancellations on this mess!

One of my lists are getting really low open rates... Wonder if this is anything to do with it?

James Scholes

Thanks for the heads up - I am sure we will get an update soon.

One door closes and another one opens...

Chris