Yahoo Mail Blacklists a Respected White Hat

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Randy Cassingham, who writes the longstanding and popular This is True (the first for-profit e-mail publication, by the way), has had his double opt-in newsletter blocked by Yahoo.

This is big stuff for a list of Cassingham’s size, as Yahoo addresses represent more than 20,000 of his subscribers, and the majority can’t receive emails they’ve opted-in and confirmed they wish to receive.

“As of now, about 70 percent of the Yahoo addresses are blocked. That’s more than 15,000 folks. That’s more than 10 percent of my entire distribution. And that’s catastrophic: it has the potential to kill True’s newsletter. Nearly 15 percent of my audience, as of this week, which means 15 percent of my revenue, including 15 percent of my ad revenue, has suddenly stopped. It’s the biggest crisis in True’s more than 14 years online. And it’s (sigh) right in the middle of a worldwide economic slowdown. What lovely timing.”

The reason for this whole mess is that some of the subscribers to This is True clicked that the newsletter was spam, rather than simply unsubscribing.

But why should you care? Well, if you’ve got an email list, you could be crushed by the same misguided policy.

Randy has been putting out This is True since 1994, and he’s been a clean emailer.

I’d urge any legitimate emailers to bring some attention to this matter - Digg it, blog about it, spread the news on Twitter, talk about it on a podcast.

And go to This is True to subscribe. It’s a very entertaining email that goes out once a week.

Don’t be the next email publisher to get whacked by these Draconian rules that result from newbie ignorance.