As small as this website is, running the entire operation on my own can be daunting sometimes. Working with a small budget doesn’t exactly allow me to hire additional help, so the writing and 10,000 other administrative tasks all fall on me.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made over the last few years was being extremely inconsistent with my email newsletter marketing. Over the years, I’ve collected more than 1,000 subscriber emails, but never kept up on the delivery side of things. A few days ago I sent a campaign in the hopes of regularizing the newsletters as promised, but I saw a pretty high unsubscribe rate and received a few spam reports.

I accepted it as attrition as some subscribers would have been signed up since 2020, so I can’t blame them for being confused about the email. Unfortunately, email marketing services don’t like it when there are spam complaints above a certain threshold. I’ve been using Mailerlite, but if spam complaints cross 0.2% of your total campaign, your account could end up being flagged for review.

On Saturday night while testing something else on my website, I noticed the email pop up form wasn’t loading as it should, and it was only then I realized my account was flagged for review. I was a bit disappointed as I wasn’t notified about this issue, and only received a follow-up email more than 24 hours after the incident. What was more frustrating was that my entire account was frozen, meaning sign-up form that I had on my site was also temporarily disabled, leading to users just seeing a black screen covering the entire page.

As much as I understand Mailerlite’s position, their slow customer service for critical matters like this isn’t acceptable, especially as a paying customer. My account was finally re-instated, but I still feel a bit uneasy using them.

Starting from scratch

Even though I’m throwing away years of building my mailing list count, I’ve decided to start fresh. I’m trying a new service called Email Octopus, and will import the last 15 new subscribers who signed up over the weekend after my last campaign over at Mailerlite.

All forms on the website have been updated, and if you want to receive my newsletter, you can either sign up from the form at the bottom of the page, or just use this direct link.

  • All emails will come from email hidden; JavaScript is required
  • You can expect emails on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 5PM Eastern Time (give or take delivery times). I would have gone with daily but I don’t want to overwhelm readers’ inboxes either.
  • Be sure to white list the email address or domain name so emails don’t end up in your spam box.
  • Most likely Gmail users may see emails ending up in the Promotions tab, so simply drag it over to the Primary tab and whitelist it from there.
  • Email signups will still be double opt in just for regulatory and spam concerns.

If you have any concerns, please feel free to shoot me an email here.