Social Me-Duh Part 1: How To Get Banned From Emailing A Whole Continent

Yes. I was completely banned from emailing the entire continent of Australia. While most wouldn’t consider email as part of the social media sphere, it is a major way to get the word out about  your apps.  But it’s also an easy way to get hit with the spammer hammer.

HOW TO GET BANNED FROM EMAILING A CONTINENT 101

I started with email promotions to highlight my social media suckery, mainly because I think it’s a pretty amazing achievement to be banned from contacting an entire continent. Email is still a major form of communication online. I already have close to a thousand people on my email list, and since they are on my lists they expect to receive my info.

As I had previously mentioned in my post about getting ready for the launch day of your app, one of the things I did was spend a few hours online finding every camera club out there and getting their contact emails. Obviously photographers are my market, so camera clubs are a logical choice to contact.

I then proceeded to make email lists for each major area, and began sending out emails when I launched the first apps in November.

The email said who I was, what the app was about and why I though the club members might be interested, and that this was a one time email.  If any of the clubs wanted to stay up to date on the apps or be notified when they were out for other platforms, I asked them to reply so I could put them on a email list. I had a variety of responses from: “Thanks for the info, keep us posted!” to “Please don’t spam us.” to “$#!$@$@#$@#$#@$”  and of course lots of no replies.
I thanked everyone who replied (and promised not to bother those who didn’t appreciate my info).

TIME TO SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE IPAD VERSIONS!

Fast forward to January. Time comes to send out the info on the iPad versions of my apps!

So I went through the lists of clubs who said they wanted to be kept notified, and sent the info out.

The next time I checked for new mail, I had a huge amount of undeliverable emails…many of which had the following statement:

Message rejected as spam (CM). Please see http://optus.com.au/mailblock

I noticed that all of the returned messages where from clubs in Australia.

Then the messages began saying:

Your message was not delivered because the return address was refused.

This was coming from my internet provider…so I knew that wasn’t good…it was then I  found out that I was no longer able to send emails out from ANY of my email addresses at all. And the internet didn’t work.

This is how I felt:

So, first thing I did (after taking a few deep breaths), was reboot my modem. Internet back on.  Still not able to send mail however.  I then fired up the webmail for my website, and found I was able to send/receive email on that. So the blocking was only on my provider.

An email from my internet service provider SECURITY department then arrived:

Oops. So basically the bounce backs, caused by my spam banning in Australia, flagged my account, which in turn got it suspended as it was found that I was actually sending out all my emails through their servers instead of my website ones.

So I explained the situation, apologized profusely, and changed my settings as requested.
And thankfully just one day after, I was back in business!

But there was still the issue of not being able to email Australia!
So I had contact the mailblocking website to see how to resolve this.

The site gave pretty clear instructions on the process to follow. I had to first email them a separate email explaining the situation, and then forward the original email that was blocked. After doing this, I received a reply informing me that the contents of the email had been reported as spam, and when parts of the same text were detected….all emails from me to Australia were banned.

Am I awesome at this, or what?

So, I replied explaining who I was, why I was emailing the info, etc…and after an hour, I received a reply that told me I was no longer banned.

So, what lessons should you take from this?

1)Do not use your personal email for this. You should have an email set up for the purpose of promoting your apps. (Not a gmail or yahoo account either. You should have a nice website for your app, right?  Well then you must have email addresses for it. If not, set one up) This way if you do get blocked, you entire life won’t be screwed because of it.
Now, I didn’t use my personal account for this, but I was accidentally using the wrong servers to send my spam…I mean app info.  Don’t make that mistake.

2)Be prepared to be called a spammer. It’s going to happen, don’t take offense. Because you are. 🙂 Well, at least in the broadest sense of the term. One would think that since the people I am contacting are interesting in photography they would be interested in the apps…but as I’ve found, that’s not necessarily the case.

So good luck promoting your app, don’t make these stupid email mistakes!

2014 UPDATE-CRITICAL TO READ IF YOU ARE CANADIAN!

The Canadian government has put in place new laws relating to SPAM, which made everything that I did illegal!
You are not allowed to just email an individual, group, etc without their consent. If you do, they can report you to the spam police, and you can be fined millions of dollars!
SERIOUSLY!
If you already have people on an email list, you should be fine, as you already have a pre-existing consent…but many people are asking people for consent again to be sure.
But just emailing someone out of the blue (as I did with the camera clubs) will be against these laws.
Reminder, this only applies if you are  in Canada. If you live in any other country, not really much the Canadian government can do to stop you.

Noel Chenier

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