Did you hear about blacklists (or blocklists) of domain names? They are databases of domain names that were reported as being used in spam messages. Once a domain name is listed by a major blacklist, all major spam filters will flag any email that contains a link to any page from that domain name.

I can hear you, “But I don’t spam, I’m a legit email marketer, so that’s not a problem for me …”

Well, don’t take this issue so easy. There are many newbies that think that spam is also an email that they don’t like or they are not interesting in. There are people who forget different things, including the fact that they subscribed to the newsletter they have just received. It happens … If such a “nice” person reports your email to the appropriate place, no one will ever give you the chance to defend yourself. Your domain name will be blacklisted without no further notification being sent to you. I know, it’s surprisingly and unpleasant, but that’s the reality.

Affiliate and reseller links are other potential dangers. If another affiliate or reseller sent spam or has been reported as spamming and the reported email contained her/his affiliate link, then the whole domain name of that affiliate program may be blacklisted. Suddenly your own affiliate page is blacklisted even if you’re an honest email marketer…

How to detect such problems?

Before starting any solo ads advertising campaign, check whether the domain name of the link you inserted in your solo ad is blacklisted or not. Do it no matter who the owner of that domain name is, how famous is and how honest is.

How to check whether a domain name is blacklisted or not?

Search on Google for “URI blacklist” and you’ll find the major blacklists. Most of them have a feature called “Lookup” and you’ll be able to search their databases.

What to do if a domain name is blacklisted?

If it is your domain name, contact the staff who runs the blacklist and prove that your email marketing practices are according to the laws and industry’s standards. If it isn’t your domain name, you cannot ask for its delisting. All you can do is to warn the owner. Until she or he succeeds to delist the domain name – don’t use your plain affiliate or reseller link. Hide it using an URL shortening service or an URL redirection service. Are these solutions safe? Yes, spam filters don’t click on links so that to notice what’s behind the new links.

To the Success of Your Solo Advertising Campaign!
Adrian Jock

P.S. Recommended readings: How to Avoid Spam Filters & Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads

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First of all, what are spam filter triggers? They are common words and expressions that are penalized by spam filters. When the penalty points assigned to a certain email message pass over a certain threshold, that message is usually routed to the intended recipient’s spam folder, rejected or even deleted at server level.

How to deal with such a problem?

The first part of the solution is relatively easy to accomplish: identify the problem words and expressions. Most of the third party services used to broadcast your email marketing messages (for example: AWeber) include pieces of software that point the words which trigger the filters. If you don’t use such a service, it’s still not difficult: search on Google for spam filter triggers and you’ll find many helpful articles.

The real challenge follows: you identified the problem words but what do you do next?

The worst and the most spread method was “invented” by someone quite many years ago and a lot of internet marketers copied it like parrots without checking whether the idea is right or wrong. What was that “great” idea? If you are subscribed to some newsletters, it’s impossible not to notice it: misspelling the words. Thus, money became m0ney, free became f’ree or f.r.e.e. or fr.ee, money back guarantee became m0ney back g’uarantee, etc.

Why is this solution the worst one?

Reason # 1: In marketing, image matters a lot. What do you think your image is in most of your readers’ mind, when they see that your emails are full of typing and grammatical errors? Most of your readers never heard about spam filter triggers. Whether you like it or not, for them “m0ney” is exactly what is it for almost everyone except you: a typing error. In such case, how’s your credibility?

Reason # 2: Many spam filters were now taught to penalize also weird spellings like “f.r.e.e.”, so you’re not actually solving anything.

Reason # 3: Gmail (and maybe more web-based email service providers) makes the word “fr.ee” clickable and there is a bigger surprise: that website exists (though it’s still under construction). Result: some of your readers will click on these links and some of your traffic will be diverted.

Then … what to do? Well, it’s very easy: remove the spam filter triggers and replace them by synonyms (or expressions having a similar meaning) that are not penalized themselves.

Example: instead of “100% money back guarantee” you can use “every penny back if you’re not 100% thrilled/satisfied”

To Your Success,
Adrian Jock

P.S. If you want to improve the deliverability of your emails, whether they are solo ads or newsletters, I highly recommend you to read the special report How to Avoid the Spam Filters.

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If you don’t know how to avoid the spam filters then the email containing your ezine ad may be sent to the intended recipient’s Spam folder or even deleted at the server level.

So what you promote the best product in the world, so what your ezine ad is written by the best copywriter in the world?

If no one receives the email containing your ad, everything is in vain.

Here are a few rules that will help you beat the most powerful enemy of ezine advertising.

Rule # 1 – Never write the subject line of a solo ad or a full line or more using CAPITAL LETTERS.

It is OK to emphasize some of the words by writing them ALL CAPS, but never ever write a whole line ALL CAPS.

Rule # 2 – Always check whether the links from your ad belong to a domain name that is blacklisted or not.

Do NOT wrongly assume that only spammers’ domain names are blacklisted.

You may be surprised to find out that the domain name of your favored program is listed by such a blacklist and as a consequence ANY affiliate link – including yours – is blacklisted too.

A very good tool for this checking is this one: http://lookup.uribl.com

Rule # 3 – You must not use in your ads words and expressions that are penalized by spam filters.

Those words are COMMON words, so don’t think that you never use the same words a spammer would use. The spammers are real people like you and me and they talk the same language. Because of them, you will be surprised to find out that many words
usually found in ezine ads … are penalized by spam filters.

Here are 3 examples:

- amazing
- make money
- financial freedom

You see? How many times didn’t you use these words?

As more such words you use in your ads, the higher your chances to be blocked by spam filters are.

Before starting to write your ezine ad, you NEED to KNOW what words NOT to use in your ad.

Side Note: Never ever mispell the words that are penalized by spam filters.

Many advertisers and PUBLISHERS make this mistake without knowing that the most updated spam filters penalize also this type of NOT PROFESSIONAL writing.

Examples:

m0ney (zero instead of the letter o)
f.r.e.e

This type of writing is called attempt to obfuscate words in spam and is penalized too.

Therefore, mispelling words in spam doesn’t help you to avoid the spam filters and in addition … make your ezine (or ad) look ugly. Not so good, right?

* * *

If you want to DISCOVER much more information YOU NEED in order to be able to avoid the spam filters and have a successful ezine advertising campaign, HURRY UP and get this SPECIAL REPORT:

How to Avoid Spam Filters

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“I never could understand the spammers. I would never open a spam email, much less buy anything.”

Well, I think that there are many people not understanding why the spammers keep sending their spam and that’s why I wrote this article.

If you want to find out the sad reason that makes the spammers exist, then keep reading …

First of all, let me clarify one thing: when you subscribe to an ezine or newsletter, or mailing list, and then you get it … this is not spam. Only the people like John from my below story yell spam every time when they receive a solo ad from an ezine they subscribed to.

Let’s come back to our topic and respond to this question:

“I never buy anything from spammers. My friends are doing the same like me. Why those spammers keep spamming us?”

Let me answer to this question by telling you a real story …

One month ago, a guy from Arizona – let’s call it John – visited one of my websites, started to place an order, skipped the first step where he was supposed to submit the ad he wanted me to publish, paid for the advertising space and then did … nothing.

Seeing that he doesn’t send me his ad, I sent him an email:

“Thank you for paying me to publish an advert for you but … you didn’t let me know the text of the ad you want me to publish. Can you do it now, please?”

Can you believe what was the answer?

John said, “What is an advert?”

John purchased from me … something that he didn’t know what it is …

Can you believe it? He didn’t understand what I was selling, he didn’t know if he needs what I was selling, but he still purchased it without asking anything …

You know why? Because someone promised him that he will become rich (yeah, sure!) if he follows a certain plan that was including buying advertising space from ezines, one of the recommended ezines being mine.

Isn’t this sad? Yes, there are people who believe anything they are told, and there are people who … don’t know their own language.

John from Arizona didn’t know the meaning of the word “advert”.

Sad indeed.

Well, like John there are tons of people online.

You know it very well in fact. The people are smart, normal, or … stupid. This is our world.

Well, the spammers exist because stupid people exist. Those people are spammers’ main target. However, when the spammers harvest email addresses they don’t know whether an email address belongs to a stupid person or not. So everybody is spammed.

I’m sure that not allowing stupid people to have internet access will drastically diminish the spam and will protect those people from throwing away their money.

However, this will never happen … A government cannot say to someone, “Hey, you’re stupid and that’s why you don’t have the right to get an Internet connection“. We would get back in the past … and this cannot be a solution.

I think that you should be very happy that you’re not a John from my real story. Pay that small price called spam that you are forced to delete daily, and be happy if you’re not stupid. This is a priceless gift!

Or alternatively, get a powerful spam filter, install it and block anything sent to you, spam emails or … legitimate emails. Or better cut off your internet connection and hope that your online business will survive [OK, I was joking. This last paragraph is addressed to people who think that spam filters and blocklists are a solution for spam]

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If you’re not a Comcast user nor a publisher, beware of spam filters. It may happen to you too!

Now here are the facts.

I’ve received an order for a solo ad from a past customer. He paid for his ad, but didn’t send me his solo ad.

I’ve contacted him and let him know that I’ve received his payment and I expect the ad. He replied quite quickly and he said that he already sent his solo ad [he was using a Comcast email address].

Since I have my own server and I don’t want to censor my own correspondence, obviously I didn’t install any spam filter. No spam filter, no server downtime … but still no solo ad from the customer.

I figured out that it has to be something wrong at the customer’s end and I’ve asked him to forward the solo ad.

He did it but … I didn’t receive it again … while his replies were received in good order.

Strange, right?

Then I’ve asked the customer to make a test:

1. to send the solo ad from his Comcast email account to my wife’s email address that is on another server

2. to send the solo ad to me from another email account he has.

Here is the result of the test:

1. the solo ad sent from Comcast to my wife’s email address never arrived at the destination.

2. the solo ad sent from customer’s MSN account to me … arrived just fine.

The conclusion is obvious: Comcast not only censors the messages their users receive, but Comcast censors also the messages their users send!

And the most important and annoying thing is this: Comcast users are not notified by Comcast when a certain message they sent … is in fact DELETED by Comcast and is never sent to the intended recipient.

Take care what email service provider you choose.

You may have a lot of problems, you may create a lot of problems … and you may never know how close the issue is to your end.

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