Whitelisting Instructions For E-Mail Marketers

One of the sad realities of e-mail deliverability is that despite every effort to whitelist e-mails and blaze the trail for them to sail into your Inbox, sometimes factors beyond anyone’s control get in the way.

Most of my colleagues manage their e-mail marketing through 1shoppingcart.com or one of its exclusive private label partners, one of the leading e-commerce solutions, and the one I highly recommend.  Some colleagues report that even though they have their system set up to notify them every time someone opts in to one of their mailing lists, they are not getting the notices from the system.

In almost every case I’ve seen, this is because my colleague’s web host was simply not letting the e-mails through.  When we ran tests, we found that the notices would get through if they were sent to an e-mail address under a different domain (such as a Yahoo! or GMail account).  At the same time, these same marketers were loath to enter such an e-mail account in their contact profile, lest the world get a hold of the address.

There is a simple solution to this.  It’s known as the Alternate Destination Split.

To set one up is simple.  Just follow these steps.

1) Log into your shopping cart account, and once in, go to Email & Marketing >> Autoresponders >> Manage Autoresponders

2) From your list of autoresponders, select one where you need to be notified when someone signs up.  In this example, we will call the autoresponder “Mailing List 1″

3) Click on its name to view its Settings, then click the “New Message” button at the bottom of the screen

4) In the new message screen, set up a message with these settings:

• “Days Delay” set to zero
• “Alternate Destination” set to the e-mail address under a different domain where you are able to get notices
• “Subject line” that says “New Subscriber to Mailing List 1 Autoresponder”

Draft a short-but-sweet message that says something like:

A new subscriber has joined the list, Mailing List 1.  Way to be, killer! 

Here are their subscriber details:

Name: %$name$%

E-Mail Address: %$email$%

Alright, time to celebrate.

Chat with myself later,

Me

And then hit “Save.”  Repeat the process for any lists where you absolutely need the heads-up each time you get a new subscriber.  If you want more subscriber data spoon-fed to you, then just add more fields from the Merge Fields menu to the message.

5) Using a webform on your website, opt-in to that list and then a few minutes later check the account where the “Alternate Destination” e-mail will go.  You should receive an e-mail that looks like the above, with the name and e-mail address of the subscriber (in this case, you) filled in.

If you need help with this, just give their tech support a call during business hours and they’ll walk you through it.

Hope that helps!