Voices en Español

I got an email this week from a Voices en Español reader telling me he had subscribed to my email list but hadn’t received a thing from me. It turns out that his email spam filter was automatically deleting my emails to him. Just out of curiosity, I took a look at my email list and realized that that reader was not alone. Over 30% of the email addresses currently on my list are listed as “unconfirmed.”

What this means for those people exactly is, yes, you are on my email list, but no, I do not officially have your permission to send you emails.

Because spam is such a huge problem on the Internet, automated services that send out blog updates and e-newsletters will not send emails to people unless they “double opt-in”. That means that you must take an extra step and specifically give your permission saying that yes, you do want to receive emails from me.

Here’s how the process works:

1). You sign up for my email list by entering your email address in a form on my blog.

2). You get a confirmation email from either Feedburner or AWeber, the automated services that I use to send out updates. You must open this email, click on the link inside that email which confirms your permission.

Where a lot of people are getting tripped up is at Step 2. If your email account is configured to automatically delete or filter incoming email from unknown sources, it’s a pretty sure bet that this confirmation email that was sent to you was deleted by your email service.

Since you never saw the email, you never knew that you needed to open it and click on the link inside. And since you never responded, my email services have taken that lack of response to mean “No, I’m not interested in getting updates by email from Voices en Español, so don’t send me anything.” In the meantime, some of you who did go to the trouble of signing up, must be wondering, “gosh, I gave Eleena my email address but she doesn’t write, she doesn’t call, nothing. She just went poof!”

While your email hasn’t been deleted from my list, I’m not allowed to use it to communicate with you because my email services won’t allow me to until you confirm your permission. Can you see how complicated this gets?

So, for those of you who have subscribed to my email list but have never received a single email from me, please check your junk mail filter and add the following URLs to the “Safe” list inside your email account. They are:

feedburner.com, aweber.com and voicesenespanol[AT]gmail.com (But use the @ symbol. I had to type my email address like this to prevent it from getting picked up by spammers.)

What’s the difference between the emails sent by Feedburner and AWeber? Feedburner sends you an email containing the latest and complete blog posts as soon as they are published. It’s actually pretty cool since it contains the graphics, photos, audio, whatever is attached to the blog entry. It’s a great way to have the blog’s contents delivered directly to your inbox so you don’t have to personally visit the actual web site to read or access the content. AWeber sends you an email approximately six times a year with announcements or special offers only available to people on my list. You can be on either list or both. Your choice.

Feedburner:
Subscribe to Voices en Español » Full Content by Email

AWeber: Look for “Newsletter Signup” in the right-hand column of the home page of this blog.

And for those of you who aren’t on the list but would like to be, you can enroll as well following the steps outlined above.

Thanks!