The Article
UNSUBSCRIBES, EMAIL ADDRESS & POP-UP
20th May 2018
If you are an occasional or regular visitor to my website or subscribe to my newsletter, here’s a few updates that may be of interest
Firstly, some of you may have recently encountered annoying issues with my newsletter. Several of you have been unsubscribed from my newsletter ‘against your will’, as it where. Others have tried to resubscribe and have then been immediately unsubscribed all over again. It’s been frustrating for you but also for me because I had no idea why this was occurring.
I’ve been digging around and have seemingly found the issues, with a lot of help from my newsletter engine, Mailchimp. And I pass this information onto you now in case you come across it elsewhere under different circumstances.
YAHOO!
The problem seems to centre around Yahoo and possibly AOL when they come into contact with Apple’s email address, ‘me.com’.
The first problem was that I used a ‘me.com’ address as my Reply address for the newsletter.
The second problem was, if a Yahoo (but possibly also an AOL) email came into contact with ‘me.com’ then all of the buttons within the associated email would be pressed, all at once. Including the unsubscribe.
But what if you don’t use Yahoo or AOL and still had the unsubscribe issues? Well, just because your email address doesn’t actually say ‘yahoo.com’ or ‘yahoo.co.uk’ that doesn’t mean that you don’t use Yahoo, for example. I’m pretty sure that BTInternet and Sky uses the Yahoo mail service, while Verizon does because it owns Yahoo. And so on. More people out there use Yahoo than you think. Why is this all happening? No-one knows. No kidding. Even Mailchimp doesn’t have a clue and it’s their engine I’m using.
EMAIL ADDRESS
Which is why, coming to my second piece of news, I have changed the newsletter reply email address and, while I’m about it, have changed the official reply email address for this website. The address is now [email protected] which solves the unsubscribe problem and, as an aside, actually makes more sense for this site and is hopefully easier to remember for regular visitors. If you still want to use my ‘me.com’ address for general correspondence then you still can. Don’t worry, it won’t spark any problems. It’s fine for general emails.
POP-UP
Finally, some of you have talked to me about other frustrations (its been one of those weeks 🙂 ) this time about the pop-up that arises when you read a story and scroll down the screen. I’m sure you’ve seen it. You get so far down the screen and a pop-up reminds you about signing up to my newsletter. Some readers out there are thoroughly fed-up with the thing.
I hear you folks! I hear you. So, to compromise a bit, I’ve been working with my techie web genius and he’s tweaked the pop-up so that it will only appear once a day. Read the site, get rid of the pop up and you’re clear for the rest of the day. It will only appear again once during the next day. And once the day after that. I’ll monitor this change. I may further tweak the timing on the pop-up but let’s see how it goes.
Be nice to hear what you think about all of the above. I live in the centre of the hurricane here, as it where, so unless you give me your views and opinions, I don’t know how you feel about changes like the above, so please send a quick email so I know if I’m on the right lines or not. Many thanks.
I used to work in email delivery. It can be a nightmare with infinite variables meeting infinite settings. Well done for getting to the bottom of it all!
Thanks for the empathy Ben – pain in the behind, though, because I’m a week behind in my work. Not your problem, I know, but I only mention that to emphasise that obtaining the solution was the result of five straight days of hanging off techie lines, being on hold forever, trying A then B then C, failing, back on the techie lines, waiting forever, talking to my web chap, back to the techie lines, waiting for ever, etc. 🙂 Technology. Just…Fun.