Blocked Email
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As you may know, Constant Contact powers the email "Taylor-on-the-Brain Bulletin" that we send. The first thing you should do is to make sure that our email address, thebrain@arlenetaylor.org, is in your email provider's list of "allowed senders" and/or that it is not in a list of "blocked" senders. Some of our subscribers have been unable to receive email from Constant Contact® because their ISP is blocking emails originating from Constant Contact®. Email blocking is an unavoidable part of commercial email and affects a very small percentage (an average trackable block rate of less than 3%) of Constant Contact® email. If YOU have not been receiving the "Taylor-on-the-Brain Bulletin," there are some steps you can take. Option 1: Option 2: Letter to send to your ISP: To: ISP Customer Support Hello. My name is XXXX and I have been a customer of your services since XXXX. I understand that you have a blacklist in place to protect customers like myself from unsolicited email; however, this blacklist has made it impossible for me to receive newsletters, announcements, and promotions that I have subscribed to receive. I value these communications and would like to receive them using this email address. The sender of these emails uses an email marketing service called Constant Contact. Constant Contact is not an open relay and has extremely strict anti-spam policies in place. Because you block emails from Constant Contact I am unable to receive these communications. I ask that you add Constant Contact to your white list. For further information about Constant Contact you may contact the Ops team at Constant Contact - 781.444.6160 ext. 303 or ops@constantcontact.com. Technical Notes for your Network Department Please contact me when this problem has been resolved. Sincerely, XXXXXX ---------------------- Option 3: ---------------------- Why Blocked Details (Blacklist) All successful email marketing companies and many major consumer and retail companies are finding some of their email blocked. As ISPs and corporations attempt to reduce the amount of unsolicited commercial email (spam) that their email clients receive, they are also blocking wanted email. The most common method of blocking is the use of blacklists. Most email marketing service providers that do not require "confirmed opt in" are on various blacklists. Confirmed opt in (also known as "double opt in") requires a reply to a confirmation email before a subscriber can be added to your list. Therefore, no email can be sent to a subscriber until the subscriber has responded to the confirmation email. You are not permitted to contact the subscriber in any manner to determine why they may not have confirmed their subscription. Confirmed opt in is NOT the commercial standard. There are activists who wish that it was, and in hopes of promoting their views they have developed blacklists. The goal of the blacklists is to block spam, or unsolicited commercial email. Because they tend to be either arbitrary or to block large amounts of user email, the blacklists are frequently ineffective and often result in "false positives" when requested emails are blocked. One reason the amount of affected mail from Constant Contact is low is that blacklists are frequently used in conjunction with exception lists, also known as whitelists. Because Constant Contact follows strict commercial opt-in policies, when we contact ISPs that are blocking Constant Contact we are almost always successful in getting on the white list. |
