Rant: Email Newsletters

I use Campaign Monitor to send my (almost) monthly newsletter, which informs my subscribers of my new photo galleries and forthcoming The Travel Photographer's Photo~Expeditions™. Although these newsletters are only sent to those who subscribe through my sign-in box on this blog, I still get a spam notice, or even two, once in a while.

So here's the rant:

1. The mailing list for my newsletter is by subscription only. In other words, the person wanting to subscribe has to fill in his/her email address and his/her name in the sign-in box.

2. Upon doing so, each subscriber gets an auto-rely from me thanking them for subscribing, and saying that they can unsubscribe at any time by clicking a clearly marked link on the newsletters.

3. So why report my newsletter as spam? Even though I have a minuscule spam rate, it's annoying. Sending a newsletter costs me money, and if subscribers change their minds, the unsubscribe option is there! So use it, for heaven's sake!

The definition of spam from Wikipedia is this: "Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately."

Obviously, my newsletters are neither unsolicited or indiscriminate.

So is it illiteracy? Confusion? I'm mystified.

Posted in: Rants