OK, one last thing and I'm out of here in search of restroom (oh the fun of business travel). Hotmail is counting all messages in one's "junk box" toward your total messages. If you get too much junk then you start bouncing the email you do want to get.

In the past this wasn't a problem, because the box auto-deletes everything after 7 days. Now with the higher incidence of junk, I routinely lose incoming hotmail mail due to full-box bouncing, even when I ruthlessly delete stuff every day. If it's happening to me, then it's happening to all hotmail users because it's a system so open to dictionary spam attacks (where spammers create lists tacking on words and letters to @hotmail.com endings and send until they get a live account).

This means anyone in the email publishing or list building game should be pushing hard to get Hotmail names to switch to other accounts, and you might even add a note next to your sign-up form saying something like "Hotmail accounts not recommended, if you want to make sure mail gets through please use a different email address. Thanks"

In our case, you'll notice all MarketingSherpa sites ask for "Your work email" on purpose. That one little word "work" inserted into the sub form does wonders for us.