So you have a new domain filled with good things, to drive
traffic to your new domain amongst other methods you use
email: to your lists, to safe list's, and e-zines etc.
You give it time for the mail to be opened then check your
stats for hits to your new site, Disaster your carefully
crafted message brings very few visitors, you start to
wonder where you went wrong.
You know from experience the typical response rate from your
own list, and a reasonable idea of Safelist response, you
know the Ezine ad has gone out ok you got your copy, so what
went wrong?.
THEN YOU CHECK YOUR MAIL BOX
If you have your own list's you see a sudden rise in bounced
mail, reading the bounce reports you see something like
"mail returned your (new) domain is on a
recognised spam list"
Very strange as this is a new domain recently registered and
so far you haven't used the domain mail for sending
messages, even more disconcerting is the fact you don't
usualy get bouncers from your own list unless the mail box
is full. And you are always anti spam compliant with your
email.
The Ezine ad's you paid for will have a similar attrition
rate and safe lists are probably much higher.
The result VERTUALY NO TRAFFIC to your new site, you bought
a good domain name, spent possibly 100s of hours building a
perfect site then BAM you are hit with this.
Most of the bounce back mails only tell you the new domain
is listed but NOT where.
It you are lucky you come across one that tells you it is in
[ob] and gives you a URL to click leading to a page on spam
registers, and how each one ties into the anti-spam
system.
Further research at the outblaze [ob] site tells you that
they provide the spam filtering for 1000s of isp's and mail
programs around the world. That covers millions of mail
boxes, including a large proportion of web based mail
programs (the type used for mass mail receipt safe lists
etc)
Further research through there pages also brings up a tactic
IMHO is pure laziness ALL NEW DOMAINES are included in the
spam list for at least 90 days, they try to justify this by
stating a domain may be purchased by a spammer and if so
chances are they wont use that domain after 90 days.
My thoughts on this: spammers are one of the most organised
email users going, if they know about the 90 day rule they
will purchase domains to sit on the shelf then use them
after the 90 day period for greatest effect, (that's what
they are experts at)
To me it's another case of punishing the majority for the
actions of a very small minority and from the amount of true
spam in my mail box's this tactic probably does NOT work
anyway.
So what can we do about it?
My experience of mailing them was not good; I received an
auto response followed by my original mail with a request to
resubmit later as they were too busy to deal with my
request at that time.
The use of tracking links will overcome the problem, on
experimenting with mail to my list the first mail had 2 new
domain URL's included in the message with the bouncers
coming back naming them both, a second mail sent with one
tracker linked and the other the domain url the bouncers
came back with only the domain url listed.
The third using tracking links for both sites had no spam
blocked bouncers at all.
The moral to this is use tracking links (good practice) in
any email based promotion use articles, blog's, pay per
click, banners and reciprocal links to start building domain
name recognition and work toward page list ranking of
you're your new site.
