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MonkeyWrench Newsletter from MailChimp
Blocked Because of Your Own Domain Name?
Someone called us on the phone recently, and said he was thinking about switching to MailChimp. He'd been sending email marketing for years, using some kind of cheap desktop software he downloaded. Long story short, he didn't keep his list clean, and he got himself blacklisted. He wanted to switch to MailChimp, because he thought his problems would magically disappear by sending from a new server. Problem is, spam filters don't care so much about your server anymore. They're scanning email content for domain names. If you send spam, or let affiliates send spam on your behalf, your company's domain could get blacklisted.
Details, and how to check your domain...

Can Spammy Keywords Actually Help?
We were helping our friends at GourmetStation with their Mother's Day email campaign, and we noticed that they were passing all the spam filters with flying colors, but the Postini firewall was still rejecting them (more on that in the next article below). Hmm. We tried to optimize their code, we tweaked their ALT-text, we re-wrote their plain-text message, but nothing worked. It was time to get drastic. We went in and removed every single keyword that could possibly be minconstrued as "spammy." We even took out every dollar sign for Pete's sake. It didn't work. In fact, things got worse. Turns out all those seemingly spammy keywords can actually help your spam score.
See what we mean...

Speaking of Postini
Dozens of MailChimp customers (and some non-customers too) have discovered how much testing time they can save with our handy new Inbox Inspector add-on. They've also discovered how strict the Postini firewall can be. Out of a few hundred campaigns tested, we've only seen less than a dozen pass Postini. Eight, to be exact. So what was the secret that got those campaigns through? We have no friggin' clue.
But we do have screenshots...

Obscure CSS Quirk in IE7
A couple of customers contacted us with some mysterious HTML email problems we'd never seen before. The tables in their emails were somehow blowing out (way out) when viewed in IE7 (which would happen if they were checking their email account at Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc). We tracked it down to how IE7 renders CSS when you forget to include your # symbol in a HEX color value.
Details...


More Email Marketing Articles...
139
Avg. amount you'll spend this year for Mother's Day
National Retail Federation Survey


50%
of consumers who open and read email marketing messages also are likely to purchase other items on impulse. - Forrester Research (2007)
via EEC StatCenter

24 percent
of web merchants have an e-mail open rate greater than 25%
Internet Retailer Survey


Weird Monkey Thingy
Every issue of the MonkeyWrench, we send one lucky subscriber a gift. Usually, it's monkey related, and usually, it's from another MailChimp customer's store.

Congrats to Ryan, from Arnold Design Group. We drew your name from the hat, so you win this month's kooky prize. This is a "Gomi Taro" monkey from MailChimp user Giant Robot, and he's making his way to your office right now. Use his built-in suction cup to stick him right on the center of your computer screen, so that you'll always be reminded of MailChimp.
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