John: Check out my post on feedback loops.

As the sys admin at a smaller ISP I can say with absolute certainty that the “report as spam” feature of AOL and other big names are seriously impacting the flow of legitimate mail. AOL users are the worst, Yahoo isn’t far behind. Yahoo impacts legitimate mail more severely as there is no feedback mechanism to alert other mail admins of potential spam originating from their network. At least AOL has that, even though it is mostly useless since they mangle things in order to “protect” every single email address-like string in the message. With Yahoo, mail just magically disappears, which is a problem since certain telecommunication monopolies utilize Yahoo.

On our emails, we always include an opt out process and, if they would just go down that road, they will find a positive response letting them know that their unsubscribe request has been processed.

Rich: As a responsible vendor (which I know you are) … you also need to make sure that anyone you send mail to actually wants to receive what you are sending.

This is why my mailing lists are all using a closed loop confirmation system … after you subscribe you need to confirm that you wanted to subscribe before your subscription will be activated.

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been flagged as a spammer several times and it is always a painful process to get that undone. You are assumed to be guilty based on someone who’s having a bad day hitting the wrong button (or hitting the right one not really understanding the email they’ve just received). It is a very frustrating problem. On our emails, we always include an opt out process and, if they would just go down that road, they will find a positive response letting them know that their unsubscribe request has been processed.