16. Ask Subscribers to Put Your Address in their "Whitelist" or Address Book

Some e-mail client programs such as AOL 8.0 and Hotmail have recently changed their interface to allow users to sort their mail into preferred folders. As people subscribe, ask them specifically to place you in their address book (AOL), "safe list" (Hotmail), or "whitelist" (some spam filters). That way your e-mail will come directly into their inbox. Asking may be a little trouble, but it may make the difference between your recipients seeing or not seeing your e-mail.

17. Monitor Blacklists and Test Accounts

ISPs and spam filter systems often check blacklists of known spammers to help them reject e-mails. If your listserver's IP address or domain -- or yours -- gets on a spam blacklist because of complaints of spam, it will prevent some of your e-mails from getting to their recipients. Your listserver vendor should be actively working with ISPs and anti-spam services to keep an excellent reputation in the e-mail community and resolve any problems. But if they fail to -- or cater to spammers -- your e-mail delivery can suffer.

SpamAssassin currently checks three blacklists, and addresses that appear on such lists cause substantial penalties to any e-mails coming from them.

Razor2 (http://razor.sf.net)
DCC List (www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/dcc-tree/dcc.html)
Pyzor (http://pyzor.sf.net)
Some other blacklists that may prevent your recipients from receiving their e-mail include:

Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS, www.mail-abuse.org) maintains the Realtime Blackhole List, an important blacklist, and has many ISPs as subscribers.
Network Abuse Clearinghouse (www.abuse.net)
NJABL.ORG (Not Just Another Blacklist, www.njabl.org)
SPAM Blocking Blackhole List (http://blackholes.bruli.net)
Other anti-spam organizations are listed in Yahoo! Directory under "Email > Spam"

You can check many blacklists at once to see if your domain is on it using a utility from OsiruSoft Research & Engineering (http://relays.osirusoft.com/cgi-bin/rbcheck.cgi).

In addition to checking blacklists periodically, it might be a good idea to subscribe to some of the more important ISPs (or find a friend who subscribes) so you can monitor if your e-mails are getting through. ISPs with the largest blocks of subscribers include America Online (with CompuServe and RoadRunner), MSN, Earthlink (with Mindspring and others), United Online (Juno and NetZero), and SBC/Prodigy. If you find your newsletter blacklisted, contact the service(s) involved and actively work to see the ban removed.

18. Move Immediately to Confirmed Opt-in

As I argued a few months ago in "Why I'm Moving to Double Opt-in Subscription Confirmation," Web Marketing Today, 9/10/02 (www.wilsonweb.com/wmt7/double_optin.htm), the time has come for each company to require the higher standard of confirmed opt-in for new subscribers. If the government doesn't require it, then the free marketplace driven by spam filters may require the higher standard. When you're falsely accused of spamming, it's a whole lot easier to argue your case before an ISP or blacklist when you have a confirmed opt-in standard than if you don't.

19. Use the Habeas Header If You Qualify

Finally, if you do use a confirmed opt-in system and qualify to apply for a Habeas warrant mark (www.habeas.com), then I suggest you purchase a license to use it. Habeas is actively working with the anti-spam community and leading spam filters to have their mark (contained in headers) recognized as certifying your e-mail as confirmed opt-in. SpamAssassin, for example, subtracts 4.00 points from your score if the e-mail message contains the Habeas header lines. For more information on Habeas, read my Review of Habeas, Web Marketing Today, 1/7/03 (www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/habeas.htm).

I wish that I could guarantee that if you took all the above steps, your legitimate opt-in e-mails would get through the spam filters. But I can't. I can't even get all my newsletters through. Another important piece of this problem is to reduce the quantity of spam, and to do that requires legislation.

20. Use a Spam Checker to Test Your Message

We're now seeing some services you can use to test the spam quotient of your e-zines and e-mail offers before sending them out.
SiteSell SpamCheck Report tests your message at no charge using SpamAssassin and sends you a report. Send your test e-mails to mailto:sales-spamcheck@sitesell.net Be careful, however, that you put the word TEST as the first word in the subject -- and make sure it is capitalized. Otherwise, the system will delete the mail, thinking it's spam. Following the word TEST, add the subject line that would appear in the email normally.
Assurance Systems offers three functions as part of a paid service. (1) Message Checker rates your e-mail message for spam. (2) Mailbox Monitor checks test addresses for each of the major ISPs to make sure your e-mail is being delivered. (3) Blacklist Alert lets you know what blacklists you are appearing on so you can work to get your domain or IP number off the list. http://www.assurancesys.com

I don't want intrusive government regulation any more than you. But I believe that the time has come for clear federal regulations to prohibit spam in the same way as unrequested faxes are prohibited. State and provincial laws can't really regulate what is a national and international problem. Federal regulations won't stop spam entirely, but they'll certainly put a dent in it. Yes, some spammers will move offshore. But thousands of small spammers who are willing to spam now because it's cheap and legal will no longer spam because it illegal, and the risks are too great. I encourage you to advocate with your legislator for federal anti-spam regulations in your country. Perhaps we can recover for legitimate business use a communications medium that was once called the "killer ap." I hope so.