Ooops… I screwed up

Man, I totally screwed up, and I’ve only been doing it for a decade!

You’d think that after ten years experience it’d be hard to make a huge fundamental error.

But the truth is… sometimes you do.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been a bit ill. Maybe it’s because Max has been a bit ill. Maybe it’s because I was tired, or was thinking about other things.

Whatever the reason, the mistake was made, and the good thing is…

…I made it with my own business.

And I sure as heck won’t make it again.

So here’s what happened…

I’ve recently moved SMTP servers for sending emails. An SMTP server is a server that purely sends emails out, it does nothing else.

The reason for the move is to get a consultant on board who can improve our delivery.

And everything was going pretty awesome.

I was getting inbox rates of 80% and sometimes higher!

My emails were going into the inbox on every major ESP (Email Service Provider), including, *gasp*, Microsoft domains.

But then, whilst helping one of my clients setup a similar service, we realised that the SMTP server should be located in Europe rather than the USA as it significantly increased the speed.

So we moved it.

The issue was, how do I check the speed?

Simple, I think to myself.

I’ll make a bunch of fake emails and send a couple of blasts to them, which will give me an indication of the speed of send.

So that’s what I did.

Idiot!

Because here’s what happened next…

The domain michaelwilding.com got a bad reputation for sending emails to a load of email addresses that don’t exist.

Which meant my inbox rate went from 80% or higher to 25%.

Balls, balls, balls, balls, balls.

What should I have done?

I should have made a fake domain, and told the SMTP server to simply discard those messages.

Which is what I did for my client.

That means the emails actually never get sent, but we can test the speed. Simple and effective.

But… it was too late for me.

Now I’m in the process of re-building the reputation of michaelwilding.com.

My email open rates dropped from nearly 20% to 2%, primarily because the domain that has given me the bad reputation is Google, and the majority of my email list is Gmail.

Balls (again).

However, here’s the upside…

It’s mistakes like this that make me good at what I do.

I make them on my own business. They cost me money. Nobody else. Everybody else gets the benefits of my mistakes.

Ultimately my reputation on Google will repair itself, it’s just going to take a bit of time.

Which means… I need you to click on the ads in this newsletter ten times more than you would normally 😉

After all, only a fraction of the people who normally read my newsletters are reading them at the moment.

Whatever you do, don’t make the same mistake.

Michael

P.S. Luckily my primary businesses haven’t been affected and are still getting inbox rates of 80% or higher. Phew.

P.P.S. I’m going to show you how to send emails from your own host, for a fraction of the cost, and with much better deliverability, than anybody autorepsonder company.