Here’s how we’re going to do the post today:
- First, I’m going to drop a tease.
- Then I’m going to give some instructions.
- And then I’m going to tease again.
Ready? Here we go.
The Tease
Hey, friends, if you’re not already subscribed to the newsletter, now might be a really good time to change that. In the next couple of weeks, there are going to be some giveaways coming down the pipeline. Here’s a great big visual hint for one:
The Instructions
You can easily subscribe right here. And no worries, our privacy policy is easy to navigate.
Now, here’s the second and third steps a lot of people skip, and then I get complaints.
- You have to confirm your subscription by clicking the confirmation link in the email you will immediately receive. In the interest of respecting people’s inboxes, I’ve set the mailing list to double opt-in. This means no one can prank you by subscribing you to things you don’t want! but it also means you have to confirm your subscription. I can’t do this for you, so please click the immediate confirmation link.
- And the final step is to whitelist the email address. If you’re unsure how to do this, easy instructions are here.
Why? Let’s take a walk through modern communications.
Here’s the thing about email — spammers abuse it. So email service providers are sensitive to anything that might possibly be spam. They collate all the ways people react to a particular message to determine how to handle the next. A email’s priority in your personal inbox may be determined by how someone else reacted to it an hour before you opened your browser.
All it takes is a lazy person clicking Mark As Spam instead of the equally-available Unsubscribe button, and firewalls go into overdrive on anything else from that address. As few as two “spam” reports per 10,000 messages can trigger filters and server blacklists.
Now it starts getting messy! Some software puts the message in a spam folder, where you can find it if you remember to check. Some software straight up deletes it without you ever even getting a chance to decide if you want to see it or not. (Yahoo! is a particular offender for auto-deleting, I’ve discovered, but it’s not limited to them.)
Even if you’ve been reliably receiving mail from a sender in the past, that can change suddenly if someone else marks it spam or if I include a trigger word. For example, you might receive my news that “Blood & Bond is coming in September” just fine, but “Free books!” will trigger filters because of the “spammy” subject line (“free”).
If you have whitelisted an address, however, it will go to your inbox even if a hyper-vigilant filter wants to delete it.
I occasionally get emails from readers who missed a promotion, new release, or giveaway because their message was in the spam folder, or others tell me their subscription never arrives at all. I can’t fix this — there are very good reasons senders are not allowed to control your inbox! So you have to whitelist the email to be certain of getting it.
TL;DR: Make sure you whitelist if you want to be alerted of news and giveaways.
The Final Tease
Still here? All set? I have new audiobooks dropping soon for both The Songweaver’s Vow and Shard & Shield, and I’ll be giving away free downloads via the newsletter.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to sharing with you soon!
