With all the spam and junk mail making its way into our inboxes, ISPs and software companies have come up with lists of criteria, formats and red flags. This allows automatic blocking of IPs and addresses commonly used by spammers.
Your “white list” is the list of e-mail contacts you want to receive e-mail from. Your white list can also be known as your “Approved Senders List”. Many times your white list is in the background and addresses get added automatically when you add new contacts to your address book. By adding addresses to your white list, approved senders list or address book, you are clearing the way for those addresses to hopefully not get blocked.
Hopefully? Well, if senders spam and get blacklisted or do spammy things, their e-mail may still get block. It’s not a perfect world.
That is why it is so important when you sign up for a mailing list, newsletter or contact a site, that you add their e-mail address to your white list, approved senders or address book. Because if you don’t take this proactive action, you risk not receiving the response you are seeking based on your request. This includes order and shipping confirmations from e-commerce sites.
When signing up for newsletters or requesting information through Web sites all onliners need to add addresses to their white list when asked to do so . Take those requests very seriously and stop right then and there and add the recommended address.
Especially if you use one of those services that send out a confirmation request to anyone who e-mails you before their e-mail can get through. If you start a request the onus is on you to add them to your list; not for the other side to have to confirm their address or fill out a form to get the response you asked for to you. For information that is automatically send upon request via an autoresponder your system’s confirmation e-mail most likely will never be seen by a human to acknowledge it and you’ll not receive the info you want.
I just so happen to have an article on the subject for your reading pleasure that also includes how to add to your white list on a couple of the top providers: E-mail White List Etiquette.
HTH!
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i can’t understand the sixth paragraph,if the info i signed up for is sent automatically upon my request,my system’s confirmation e-mail most likely will never be seen by a human to acknowledge it and I’ll not receive the info I desire,why?If there is a potential failure mode in the setup,why does it exist?
Brian:
Good point. However, if folks who used these type of systems, used them properly — no failure.
Say you sign up for a free information to be sent to you. Like my Free Weekly E-mail Etiquette Tips. You provide your e-mail address and my system automatically sends out a confirmation *you* need to respond to, to confirm your desire to receive my tips. If someone has one of those systems where for that e-mail to get through a human as to confirm — well they are out of luck.
My system, just like many like it, will dump or delete those type of e-mails.
I don’t see those e-mails and that is intentional. I don’t have time to go through all that just to get something I am offering for free out to someone who may want it. If you are going to use a system like that, then the onus is on you to use it properly and not expect those who are responding to requests you initiated to have to take those extra steps to get you want you requested.
The failure comes from folks who use these type of systems mot adding the domain of the site they made the request from to their whitelist or approved senders. I have a note right on that sign up page to add my e-mail address to their whitelist so my confirmation request and tips get through. You probably see these type of messages on many sites.
So, again, if you want to receive anything from anyone, stop and add their domain to your whitelist — especially if you are using a spam blocking confirmation system. HTH!