Email Newsletters Fight Bulk Mail Folders: ContentBiz Calls for Industry Meeting with AOL

"I'm at a loss as to the cause of it, and what to do," says Matt
Mickiewicz, Publisher of SitePoint whose popular opt-in email
newsletter for webmasters is being shunted into recipients' bulk
mail folders by Yahoo. "This has been happening for weeks,
however for some reason one issue, #159, managed to squeak by for
no apparent reason. I and many of my readers have complained to
Yahoo repeatedly."

Cahners Business Media, which publishes about 100 email
newsletters, has also seen delivery problems on the increase due
to AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo bulk mail systems. Jeanne Jennings,
Cahners Director eMail Product Development, told us their
advertising-based and paid-subscription newsletters are having
delivery problems. "If people are paying for a subscription,
it's a real problem when it ends up in the AOL bulk mail box
where they'll probably never see it," she says.

Chris Pirillo, Author of 'Poor Richard's Guide to E-Mail
Publishing', tried the fixes for this problem suggested in

the 8/09 issue of ContentBiz with limited success. His
Lockergnome opt-in newsletters now sometimes go to Yahoo's
regular email in-boxes and sometimes end up in bulk boxes with no
apparent rhyme or reason. Lockergnome is a well-established
publication with more than 200,000 readers and sponsors including
Intel.

Cahner's Jennings and Anne Holland, Publisher ContentBiz, are
proposing that a group of Washington DC area publishers meet in
September with the aim of discussing bulk mail issues with an AOL
representative. If you are interested in participating, email
anneh@marketingsherpa.com.

If you'd like to learn more about this controversy, here links to
some of the most useful information resources:

- ContentBiz's original article on this topic:
"Publishers: Stop AOL, Hotmail & Yahoo from Putting Newsletters
into "Bulk Mail" Folders"
http://www.contentbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1785

- eZine Tips follow-up articles:
"Back in the Spam Trap Again"
http://ezine-tips.com/articles/resources/20010816.shtml
"A Low-Tech Way to Beat the Spam Trap"
http://ezine-tips.com/articles/resources/20010820.shtml

- iMarketingNews follow-up article:
"E-Mail Publishers Find Bulking Up Can Be Harmful"
http://www.imarketingnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=16678&dest=article

- Editor&Publisher's follow-up article:
"Spam Fighters Block Legit E-mail Your Newsletter May Not Be
Getting Through"
http://209.11.43.220/editorandpublisher/features_columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1011343