You might know I LOVE my newsletter system. It’s an automatic, RSS driven newsletter that delivers the posts here on the site directly to my subscribers.
There’s no other system out there that keeps my name, and what I do, in front of the people that matter most to my business. It’s the Killer Incubation System – you might not be ready for a new website right now but subscribe and when you are ready my magical newsletter will just happen to pop up in your inbox at just the right time. If you have a business with any sort of sales cycle, you need a newsletter!
I’ve been working hard to build my permission based list over the last few months…
This is why I want most any and everyone to sign up for my Newsletter. (almost)
There’s Something Rotten in Denmark
While that quote from Hamlet refers to a particular political hierarchy, its the metaphor of fish that I’m referring to.
While I welcome everyone to subscribe to my newsletter, I’ve recently noticed something ‘fishy’. The emails coming in are…
Yes, those look awfully fishy – right? @nokiamail.com? @trash-mail.com? That’s what I thought too. There are bots out there that plant spam comments using those type of emails. You don’t see their comments here because I run Akismet and a few other preventative measures. Did you also notice that they are all from different IP addresses? That’s troubling too.
The Double Opt In
The system I use (MailChimp), and the systems I set up for clients use what is called “Double Opt In”. That means when you enter your email address there’s one more step to activate your subscription. The system sends an email with a special link to the email provided. Click on the link and you are set to go. Don’t click on the link and nothing happens.
With spam emails like this – initiated by either Bot or real human spammers, you would think that Double Opt would effectively deal with spammers. It always has in the past.
But to my dismay, some of these are Double Opting In!
Not 100% but a majority are. That means that either they’ve created a Bot that knows there’s going to be a follow up email and clicks the link, or the humans are doing it manually.
I had to look it up but @nokiamail runs a free email service popular with spammers. That might answer the who and the how but my next question is the
WHY?
Why subscribe to a newsletter? It’s not like they are going to get inside my website. Each email is just a snippet of the post with a link going back to the full post. I honestly don’t understand their end game.
I’m going to pose this question to MailChimp and see what they say. I’ll update their answer in either a new post or a follow up here.
Do you know why they might be doing this? I’m baffled.
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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