Why a Plus Edition Subscriber Might Not Receive the Newsletter

UPDATE: See the comment from a newsletter reader at the bottom of this page explaining her experience with spam filters.


The Plus edition newsletter is being sent to every Plus Edition subscriber every week. However, not everyone receives it. Even so, EVERY Plus Edition subscriber can ALWAYS read the newsletter online at any time at http://www.eogn.com/wp/thisweek.htm.

Last week’s Plus Edition newsletter is always available online at http://www.eogn.com/wp/lastweek.htm.

The two-week-old Plus Edition newsletter is always available online at http://www.eogn.com/wp/twoweeks.htm.

If you can log onto that page and read the newsletters there, you know that your Plus Edition subscription is active and working properly. The Plus Edition newsletters are being mailed to you every week. You can also verify your subscription at any time at http://www.eogn.com/amember/member.php where you will see all the information about your subscription. If your subscription has expired, you can also renew at the same page.

Explanation:

I send several thousand newsletters in each mailing. Every week, I receive a few email messages from subscribers saying the Plus Edition newsletter did not appear in their in-box. Sometimes it can be found in their spam folder, sometimes not.

NOTE: Gmail readers can always have the newsletter placed into the in-box. Read http://blog.eogn.com/2014/09/07/how-to-make-gmail-always-place-this-newsletter-in-the-in-box-not-in-the-spam-folder/ for details. Some other mail servers can do the same.

Based on feedback, I estimate that about 95% of the newsletters get delivered. The other 5% or so get blocked by spam filters or (rarely) by other causes. With many e-mail providers, the EOGN newsletter will get through one week, gets blocked the next week, and then might get through the following week. It all depends upon what words are used in the newsletter. (I have a long list of words and phrases that I will not use in newsletter articles, as I know that some spam filters will block anything that contains those words or phrases. I’d send you the list except that your email provider then might block this email message.)

While I promise that I will send the Plus Edition email message every week to EVERY Plus Edition subscriber, I cannot promise that you will receive it. That is outside my control.

Over the years, I have received dozens of reports of non-delivery of the newsletters. In every case where we have been able to track down the problem, it has ALWAYS been one of three things:

  1. the subscription had expired
  2. the reader’s mailbox was full
  3. a new subscriber accidentally entered a typo error in his or her email address
  4. spam filters

I have never found a fifth cause.

99% of the time it is caused by spam filters, either at the receiving mail server or in the subscriber’s own computer. Sometimes the newsletter will appear in your spam folder, other times it will not. Mailbox full and expired subscriptions are rare as the subscriber usually knows about those problems and rarely contacts me. Spam filters appear to be the cause of about 99% of the problems reported to me.

Please keep in mind that I guarantee that I will SEND the Plus Edition newsletter to every subscriber’s e-mail address every week. Notice that I wrote that I guarantee that I will SEND it. That is not a guarantee that you will RECEIVE it as receiving it is beyond my control.

I don’t know why your email provider or a spam filter in your computer is blocking the newsletters. I do know that several email providers block ALL the eogn.com newsletters. I also know that AOL blocks many of the newsletters and both Roadrunner and Cox.net block the newsletters some weeks but not on other weeks. I have no idea why. Google’s Gmail likes to place the newsletters in the Spam Folder sometimes but otherwise the newsletters always seem to arrive at Gmail properly. I also know that other email providers also block the EOGN newsletters frequently but I have never been able to create an accurate list of those that do versus those that do not. The list aso apparently changes from week to week as the system support people keep changing the spam filters when new problems are found.

Don’t forget that you can ALWAYS read this week’s Plus Edition newsletter at ANY TIME at http://www.eogn.com/wp/thisweek.htm.

Last week’s Plus Edition newsletter is always available online at http://www.eogn.com/wp/lastweek.htm.

The two-week-old Plus Edition newsletter is always available online at http://www.eogn.com/wp/twoweeks.htm.

If you ever find a way to guarantee delivery of email newsletters, please let me know! I’m willing to pay quite a bit of money to anyone who can solve the problem. So far, I have asked several experts who are in the business of sending bulk email messages and not one of them has been able to find a reliable solution. All of them tell me they have the same problem.

Actually, anyone who can find a solution that guarantees delivery of wanted email messages will become a millionaire as soon as he or she publishes a book on the subject. Thousands of Internet authors will buy that book! So far, nobody has been able to write that book.

Thank you.

Dick Eastman


UPDATE: 
Over a recent weekend, I sent two email messages: one long one with the entire
newsletter in HTML and a short email in plain text that simply gave a link
to the newsletter that is available http://www.eogn.com/wp/thisweek.htm as I
knew that short messages sometimes can get past spam filters while long email
messages get blocked.

Here is a message I received one day later from a Plus Edition newsletter reader:

“I’m holding up a virtual bottle of champaign to TOAST YOU. I called my Internet provider and told them about sending two messages last night (one short and sweet, and one with all the bells & whistles), and that I wanted them to stop WITHHOLDING my wonderful PLUS EDITION. A little more “posturing”, then they asked “the name of the sender”, which I gave them, and then she said NOW THEY WOULD TAKE IT OUT OF THE BLACK LIST and put you on the WHITE LIST. Thank you for being so LONE-RANGER-ISH…”

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