Email subscription too difficult!!!!!
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I’ve joined wordpress to set up a photography blog so that my contacts can subscribe. I’ve posted a blog and set up a wordpress email widget for people to subscribe. To test it I emailed a few of my friends to see if they could sign up. Only two made it!!! When I emailed them to see what the pronlems were. This what they said:
-Some didn’t think they had to do anything else once they hit subscribe and ignored the follow up email by not reading it
-For some the follow up emailed got caught in the spam filter and they didn’t see it
-Some didn’t know what to do with the follow up email and said it was too complex.
I have two questions a) is the feedburner email subscription easier to use and b) why can’t the wordpress email subscription be simpler- surly if they enter their email and click subscribe, that should be enough!!!!
SteveThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I am sorry about your friends.
If all one needs to do is enter an email and their is no “do you really mean this” email I could sign you up for tons of spam. All email subscriptions I have used have the opt-in feature to prevent abuse.
You can use feedburner but I think it also requires an opt-in.
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Auxclass is right. Email list owners accused of spamming risk having their email account suspended, their domain name blacklisted by other email providers, etc. So, with good reason, they protect themselves by requiring opt-in. More information here:
http://www.spamhaus.org/whitepapers/mailinglists.html -
Morning @airodyssey – thanks for the link –
I guess he could send emails from his personal account but that is not automatic and more work – oh well
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Many thanks for your reply. I’m not really sure why anyone would want to sign up for tons of spam. Also, in these days when we all get loads of unwanted emails – it’s an irony when it’s made so difficult to actually sign up to something you actually want to. The ‘confirm’ email gets caught in a spam filter. In any case the “confirm” email should be made easier in a one stage process – eg click to confirm that you signed up to Joe Bloggs blog. Your current process takes you to a second somewhat confusing page about email frequencies and other stuff to update.
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@auxclass: You’re welcome :-)
@stevemorrisphotography: Precisely. It’s because of spammers that companies enforce opt-in. Just like airport security: it’s enforced because terrorists got through before.
You could send your emails manually as auxclass suggested. But, in order to protect your subscribers’ privacy, remember to put their addresses in the “Bcc” box only, not in “To”. Also, if you get a spam complaint, be prepared to prove that your subscriber willingly accepted to get your emails.
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Another approach to doing the emailing yourself that incorporates all that airodyssey has stated is to use a contact form. Set it up to state that email subscriptions for posts are being offered and if you wish to be a subscriber for the purpose of receiving blog posts they must enter their email address into the comment form.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact-form/If you want to direct your feedback to Staff use this link > http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
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Spam filters now days are overly sensitive in many cases. I’ve had a lot of friends getting caught by the spam filter at my ISP where they had not been caught several months ago. It’s one of the outgrowths of the fact that 97% of all emails are actually spam and the fact that spammers are constantly changing tactics to try and get around the spam filters.
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