Attention AOL emailers:

AOL is de-listing YOU from my newsletter AUTOMATICALLY!

This morning I noticed that a HUGE amount of new readers had de-listed after receiving one newsletter. It put me in panic mode. What did I write that hacked off everyone so badly?

I was getting ready to email each of these new subscribers individually to find out what I had done and then noticed 95% of the de-listed emails were AOL accounts.

I dug around a little more and discovered AOL has unsubscribed EVERY AOL newsletter reader. How nice of them to take care of their customers that way. Automatically taking them off of a mailing list for something they double-opted in for.

I pay for and use an email delivery service to avoid this very problem. It’s not like the newsletters are filled with SPAM warning signs. This service warns me before I que up the newsletter whether I’ve written it in a way that will alarm the SPAM filters.

Hopefully, that service will get this AOL problem resolved and will re-subscribe everyone that was automatically unsubscribed. They will probably succeed getting back on AOL’s approved list but I’m not very hopeful they will let me re-activate the subscribers AOL unsubscribed.

If you are an AOL emailer and would like to receive the newsletter, get either a Gmail account (google mail) or a Yahoo Mail account and re-sign up. I have accounts on both and the newsletters arrive without hitch.

AOL’s Big Brother move is very disappointing as a large percentage of the newsletter members signed up under AOL email addresses and can’t receive the newsletters.

2-24-09 Update

I’ve got to hand it to AOL and Aweber. Yesterday, their customer support groups really took the bull by the horns and got to the bottom of the problem. It’s a valuable lesson for all who use the internet to market their business.

One single link, a friend’s, that I always included at the end of the newsletter has been blackballed by AOL.

(Honestly, I suspect it has something to do with a legal war my friend is in the middle of. The other party has done some amazingly unethical things to stop my friend’s lawsuit from moving forwards. Getting AOL to blacklist his site wouldn’t even be in the top 10 of the tricks they’ve pulled.)

Anyway, if Aweber lives up to it’s word, it will be re-instating all of the AOL members it took it upon itself to de-list. I’ve done everything they’ve asked me to so far. Now it’s up to them.

This gives me an opportunity to remind you that when you don’t investigate an apparent problem, such as a sudden increase or decrease in crew production, you’re bound to be missing a serious problem that may have a very simple solution.