It's too easy to send to removed users!

[lynda.kane]

Hi Dean,

We have just sent out a ListMail mailing to a selection of our lists (3000+ people). And now have a number of people very angry with us, as we have removed them in the past and they have received our recent email nonetheless.!!

When I do a search for their names I get "0 results for <email>"

When they use our unsubscribe link to remove themselves, they get this message :

"Hello - I received an email from your website and clicked on the  
unsubscribe button. I got a message back which said 'you are not on  
our database. This mistake should never happen. Please contact the  
administrator on the website for manual removal'. .

 . .  which I cannot do as I cannot find them on the database!!

One of them is now starting legal proceedings against us with the data protection/ROI/CanSpam authorities and is extremely angry.  I do not know what to do or say as I cannot find these people on any of our lists!!

Help!
 
I would appreciate your immediate help as I have asked the person about to embark on litigation to hold fire whilst we hear back from you.

Thanks,

Lynda

[mike2]

If I had to guess, I'd say your users are of the "removed" status, so if you search for them, do so and select "removed", you'll probably find them.

I'd say the selection you setup for whatever reason didn't take into consideration this status and just mailed to them all...

I highly doubt that one mailing to someone would constitute any legal proceedings against you, honestly... they are probably just blowing smoke.  Just my .02 and hope.

[lynda.kane]

Phew,

Found them!  Thanks so much.  Why on earth would 'removes' be included in a mailing?  I'm going to have to explain it to these annoyed people.  

Lynda

[lynda.kane]

I vaguely remember an option where I could choose if removes were kept on the database, but I can't find it any more to disable it   Is there any merit to keeping one's removed emails on the database or should I get rid of them all?  Is there a command to show them all?

Still would like to know why choosing a selection of lists would include removes. Did I do something wrong in the selection?  I send regular emails out to one of the lists included in this selection and the people removed from that list have definitely not been receiving emails when sent out only to that single list.

Be grateful for any expansion of my understanding here!  I'm scared to use another selection until I've either removed all the removes or know why this happened.

Thanks,

Lynda

[lynda.kane]

OK, I now know what went wrong.  I didn't notice the the first box in the user selection screen was defaulted to ALL, not to ACTIVE. I assume ALL includes the removes?  

Note to Dean - I've just checked the online help for user selection and attetnion is not drawn to choosing carefully in this box!! In fact the options in this box are not mentioned at all!!   I think it should be talked about because of what happened to me this weekend!  !!

Lynda

[DW]

This is noted and moved to suggestions for consideration.  I hope you are able to smooth things over with the few angry (former) clients.  Try not to stress out too much - they weren't going to become paying customers anyways.   You may receive some warnings from your provider or other, but as long as you are proactive it should be ok.  On HotMail, AOL, and Yahoo, where removed users might have flagged your message as spam, your reputation should recover fairly quickly.  You may want to consider feedback loops at HotMail and AOL to further clean your lists of complainants (You simply follow the remove link in returned email).  You can check on your IP and domain reputation with a multi rbl tool.

Regards

[lynda.kane]

  OK, I've calmed down now  :roll:  and thanks!  Thanks for all the tips re spam/reputation. Much appreciated. Final question, Are removes always kept on the database unless irrevocably removed manually, or is this a configurable option somewhere?

Tks,

Lynda

[DW]

Lynda,

At this time you must make sure the "Keep removed users in database but don't mail option" is unchecked for each list on the "List Settings" page.

To clear all removed users on all lists from your database with a custom query (using PhpMyAdmin or other tool) the query would be:

Code: [Select]

DELETE FROM lm_users WHERE cnf = '2';
Regards

[lynda.kane]

Thanks. Looked for that but couldn't find it!  What would be the purpose of keeping flasgged removes on your database?

Lynda

[DW]

Lynda,

There are some uses, such as if you were using ListMail as a membership system, with users' username and password stored in ListMail custom fields.

I can't think of any off the bat, but there are surely one or two more..

Regards

[lynda.kane]

 so there's no problem in getting rid of them then! ?

Lynda

[DW]

Lynda, None  Regards