I appreciate the thoughts. The reason we get tagged as a spammer is that I don't mail my newsletters often and I have newsletters with 5000 or more members on them because my sites are quite popular. If a newsletter goes out three years after someone signs up, a lot of people forget they signed up and reported it as spam.

It's not spam going out from our server. It's actual signed-up-for newsletters. It's just that I don't send them often.

The forum traffic drop came long before secure servers were a "thing". It was a holistic change due to the change in how people kept in touch. Our 300+ editors used to live in the forums. Now they all live on Facebook. They find the forums cumbersome and not as intuitive. Life changes.

The forum reminder emails consistently get marked as spam by my users. It's their #1 spam report issue. I will take the steps to make sure they don't get sent any more. Users barely remember they signed up for the forums, never mind wanting to take any steps to shut the mail down.


Lisa Shea, owner, BellaOnline.com
BellaOnline Website
BellaOnline Forums - UBB since Apr 2002 - 58,000 members / 850,000 posts