Advice About White Listing

The biggest challenge newsletter publishers face today is outsmarting email “spam” filters. Current best practices involve:

1) Pre-testing your newsletter messages against popular filters so you avoid using “spammy” language. I use Lyris’ free ContentChecker which emails a report with your message’s Spam Assassin score.

2) Advising your readers about how to place your newsletter on their white list. Here are some instructions that I plan to pass on to my “Surfing the Net with Kids” subscribers:

Hotmail: Place the domain “surfnetkids.com” in your safe list. The safe list can be accessed via the “Options” link next to the main menu tabs.

AOL: Place the domain “surfnetkids.com” in your address book.

Yahoo! Mail: If one of our newsletters is filtered to your ‘bulk’ folder, open the message and click on the “this is not Spam” link next to the “From” field.

Other providers: If our newsletters is being filtered, try adding our domain “surfnetkids.com” or our newsletter’s ‘From’ or ‘Reply-to’ address to your address book or contact list. If this option is not available, try moving the message to your ‘inbox’ or forwarding the message to yourself.

If subsequent messages continue to be filtered, call or email your ISP’s tech support and specifically ask how you can be sure to receive all email from Surfnetkids.com.