Whether You Know It Or Not...
Your Email Is NOT Being Delivered!

From the Desk Of: Alan R. Bechtold
March 10, 2008

Have you ever waited for an email you were counting on that never arrived? Maybe you ordered something online, were promised an emailed receipt—and never got it. Perhaps you signed up for an emailed newsletter that never appeared.

Did you blame the sender? Did you think maybe the company or individual you were dealing with had failed to fulfill on a promise?

Have you ever then dug around in your "junk" or "spam" folder—and found emails you thought you'd never received?

There is a huge problem with email today. No one wants to talk about it. Not many people know the problem even exists—but it's having an effect on everyone.

E-mail Deliverability Has Gone Into the Toilet

If your living depends on email, chances are you're already aware of the terrible problems with email deliverability that we face today. Unfortunately, if you only occasionally communicate with friends, family or co-workers, you might not even be fully aware of the problem.

Still, the problem exists. It can cause you to lose friends, money -- even jobs! And it's getting progressively worse.

The problem is happening as a direct result of the efforts your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Email Service Provider (ESP) is undertaking in the name of "protecting" you from spam.

It's been argued that heroic measures are required, to help keep your "in" box clean and free of clutter, that your ISP or ESP is looking out for your best interests. Many say the task has become so daunting, and email systems are now so clogged with a continual glut of incoming spam that, to remove even a percentage of this junk, some legitimate emails must be pitched, too.

It's simply impossible, say the ISPs and ESPs who serve us, to do a good job of being your "watchdog" without accidentally tossing the occasional message you were counting on receiving with the junk. There just isn't a better way to do it.

There are alternatives:

It's NOT What They Say...

Sadly, you've been misled. Despite what they might be telling you, there is a simple way for ISPs and ESPs to eliminate even more spam from their systems than they do now, while preserving most or possibly even all of the email you want to receive.

It all boils down to one simple step. A single shift in the way ISPs and ESPs currently sort through incoming email. If they made this simple change, we would start receiving all the email we count on our ISPs and ESPs to deliver and the ISPs and ESPs would be free to apply whatever methods they feel are necessary to continue eliminating spam.

In short, by implementing this one simple change, efforts to control spam could continue and even improve—and no legitimate email traffic would be lost in the name of eliminating spam again.

Sadly, it appears the ISPs and ESPs of the world have simply choosen not to take the one simple step required to make this happen.

Why not?

It could be that it would cost slightly more to handle your email properly by doing things the right way. Too bad. I say, if it costs your ISP or ESP a little more to handle email correctly, they should deal with it, suck it up and find a way to overcome the added expense—or get out of the email business.

It might be that there's a conspiracy underfoot to begin charging for delivery of all commercial email. I have a strong suspicioun this is the real culprit—but I won't go into it here. I'm more interested in giving you the facts about the current situation, rather than theories.

Whatever the reason, there's no logical excuse for the damage that's now being done to our email, as a direct result of the failure of ISPs' and ESPs' to handle our communications effictively.

We stand to lose email as a legitimate dependable communications medium if something isn't done to turn the situation around very soon.

Remember—even if you're only a casual user of email service, the "problem" I've described isn't that people can't easily spam you like they once could. Legitimate online marketers hate spam, too. It clutters up your email box and makes the messages that they send to you—if you've opted in and shown an interest in hearing from them—harder to find if they do get through.

As I said, we all want to see spam eliminated. But we also want email to work reliably, or there isn't any point in cleaining up our "in" boxes, because we'll simply shut them down or stop checking them anyway. If the problems aren't cleared up soon, we'll all simply walk away from email—and one of the greatest innovations for instant worldwide communications will die.

What Can We Do?

First—you should whitelist or add to your "accepted senders" list or folder anyone and everyone you want to hear from by email. Follow all the instructions that your ISP or ESP provides. Call them and ask how it's done, if you have to.

As an email sender, you should be very careful about the length of your E-mails. Also watch the subject matter and the words you use in your messages.

Still, after all the above, receiving all the E-mails you want to receive and count on receiving is now a hit-or-miss proposition. Sending them out is even tougher. Everything you can do to improve deliverability still offers no guarantee that deliverability will be the result.

It shouldn't be this way! I want to illustrate for you that you are missing important emails, for whatever reason. I want to show the world that emails that aren't commercial in nature are being lost at an alarming rate.

And I want to show everyone clearly which ISPs and ESPs are the worst offenders and which are the best at handling your email properly and eliminating spam. This way, the market can choose the right ISPs and ESPs, rewarding them with growing success while the worst offenders suffer the losses they deserve.

In short, I want to set up a scenario where the market will take care of the
problem for us.

Introducing—The Great Email Experiment!

This is why I have launched The Great Email Experiment—and why I or one of my fellow supporters have asked you to join this much-needed movement.

Starting on March 24, 2008 and ending April 7, 2008, The Great Email Experiment will determine statistically exactly which ISPs and ESPs deserve your continued business—and which don't.

I sincerely hope you'll join us, because there's genuine strength in numbers. If this Experiment is going to have a real effect on email deliverability in the future, we need the maxinum number of participants in the Experiment. The more participants we have, the more the major news media will take notice when we release the results of our Great Email Experiment.

With major news media taking notice, the market WILL change the way email is handled.

If you agree to participate, you will be asked to whitelist or add to your "accepted senders" folder the email address we'll be using to to send you emails during the Experiment.

During that two-week Experiment itself, I'll send you a series of six emails—three each week. Each email will be personal in nature ... the kind of message you might send to your family, friends or co-workers. But—each message will also contain words and phrases known to trigger the "spam" response in ISPs and ESPs handling your email. Each email in the series will include even more known trigger words and phrases.

Some of the emails could provide you with a laugh or two. Consider that a bonus.

If you receive each of the six emails—you won't have to do anything else. If you fail to receive any of of the six emails, or if you find any of the six emails in your "junk" or "spam" folder, rather than in your "in" box, you'll be asked to visit a simple online form to answer just three questions: what is the date, who is your ISP or ESP, and did you find the email in your "spam" or "junk" folder?

That's it. That's all you need to do to participate in this history-making Experiment and effectively improve the Internet for all of us.

Your Help Is NEEDED—And It's EASY To Help!

Again, all you have to do to help us carry out this experiment, enlighten the world-at-large that serious problems with email exist and, hopefully, to bring market forces into action and improve the situtation, is:

1. Sign up below to participate

2. Watch your email for two weeks

3. Check your "spam" or "junk" folder if one of the six emails doesn't appear in your "in" box

4. Fill out the simple three-question survey form each time an "Experiment" email fails to arrive or lands in your "spam" or "junk" folder

I don't think I could have made your part easier.

-- But I have anyway!

How Do You Know What You Didn't Receive?

One of the biggest reasons why so few people even realize there's a problem with email today is that the problem is often extremely hard to see. If you don't send or receive emails in quantity, you might only be missing an incoming email here and there, every once in a while.

I don't know about you, but it's awfully hard to tell what you haven't received, unless you knew in advance it was coming.

I realized early on that I'd have a similar problem conducting the Great Email Experiment, if I didn't have a way to notify everyone that a new email in the series has been sent. I definitely knew I couldn't rely on email to notify everyone.

So—for use during the Experiment, I've had a special, very simple piece of software created that's actually an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader tied to one blog and one blog only. This software is very easy to use. All you do is download it and install it, to place a tiny icon in your computer's system tray. That icon will sit there quietly, waiting until the blog it's connected to has been updated.

Every time a new email is sent out in the series of six emails we'll be using during the Great Email Experiment, I'll also post that email on that blog. Then, the tiny icon will blink, notifying you that a new message has been sent.

You can click on the icon to read the message—then go to your "in" box to see if it's there.

If the message isn't in your "in" box (after allowing an hour or two for the message to arrive), then you can check your "spam" or "junk" folder, and visit the simple online form to report your results.

It's simple and requires no effort on your part and very little of your time, but the results could be tremendous.

A Tiny Action With BIG Rewards...

That's really all there is to it. Join us in The Great Email Experiment and you could actually help us rescue email, bring reliability back to our ISPs and ESPs, and bring back the benefits of simple, reliable worldwide communications once again.

Even better...

• There is absolutely no cost to participate
• We won't spam you or blast you with commercial offers
• We won't sell, lease, rent, allow others to peek at or otherwise make your name and email address available to anyone else for any reason (I said we're also opposed to spam and I meant it!)
• You're only providing us with the ability to reach you for the purposes of conducting this experiment and I promise not to unduly bother you, unless and until there is a valid development I feel you should be aware of

I will tell you up-front that we'll be beta-testing the simple RSS software I mentioned before, during the Experiment. If things go well with it, I might make it available to you when we've completed the Experiment.

If you now send any form of communications to a list of more than five people or if you currently have a blog—you might want to nab this nifty little program and start using it to notify your list whenever you have some news they'll want to hear -- without relying on email to get your notice to them.

If it works as well during our beta test as I suspect it will, it could provide everyone who needs it a simple, reliable alternative to email we can use until we've managed to rattle the ISPs and ESPs of the world into straightening up and getting their acts in order once and for all.

You'll have the first opportunity to see this software in action during the course of the Experiment, before anyone else on earth, if you choose to join us.

But wait! There's MORE...

I intend to keep this fun and lively. Toward that end, I already said some of the emails sent to you during the Experiment will be fun to read. The "trigger" words we're choosing will help make that happen.

Consider any laughs you get along the way my bonus gift to you.

Also—immediately after you've verified your participation with us, I'll send you a link where you can download my free report, "You've Lost Mail!"

This special 34-page report reveals:

• The problems we're having with email today
• Some history of why the problem is happening
• What's required today to get most email delivered
• The simple solution few ISPs and ESPs are using
• My suspicions about the "bigger" picture
• How the Great Email Experiment Works
• Where we'll take the Experiment next

The report should put everything into perspective for you, so you're fully charged up and ready to roll when the Experiment begins. It's also going to provide the world at large with more information than they've ever seen about email reliability when we release the results of our Experiment.

And The Gifts Keep On Coming...

Also, during the experiment, you'll be presented with a choice of gifts from some of my partners who share my concerns about the future of email deliveribility.

Perhaps one of those partners invited you to come to this site today.

My partners in this experiment are providing these gifts to introduce themselves to you, and to reward you for helping us finally do something that might improve the deliverability of email for everyone.

We have more than 40 partners involved and roughly half have already provided exciting free gifts we'll be releasing to you each time a new email is sent out during the Experiment.

Gifts we'll be giving away during the Experiment continue to pour in almost daily.

Where Do We Go From Here?

After the Experiment is complete, I'll also send you the results as soon as they're compiled. You'll be one of the first people on earth to know decidedly which ISPs and ESPs are worthy of handling your email—and which don't deserve your trust at all.

Then, we'll release the results of our Experiment to the general public, via major news outlets. This is when I expect to see some real changes start happening.

Let's Get Going—Have Some Fun
—And CHANGE THE WORLD!

It's the best combination I can imagine. We'll have some fun, find out the truth about email delivery, create a chart of our results and bring those results to the world, where they can and will have a positive and hopefully lasting effect. As a participant in the Great Email Experiment, you'll be one of the first people to see the results.

In the meantime—there are loads of gifts in store for you enjoy along the way.

I can't wait to get started and I hope you feel the same way!

Just whitelist or otherwise add the following email address to your "accepted senders" folder right now:

TheGreatEmailExperiment@postmaster.goldbar.net

If you aren't sure how to do this, check out this page:

http://www.sysop.com/whitelist.php

The page listed above has some whitelisting instructions for some of the most popular ISPs and ESPs who handle email today. If your service provider isn't on the list, or if the instructions I've provided don't make sense or are out-of-date ... contact your ISP or ESP and ask them specifically what you need to do.

Then ... sign up below, and keep an eye on your Email box. I'll send you a confirmation email, then an instructions email and updates.

On March 24, 2008, we'll get the Experiment underway.

Thanks again—and WELCOME ABOARD! The Great Email Experiment is about to begin and I'll be honored to have you along for the fun.

—Alan R. Bechtold

---

Sorry! Participation In
The Great Email Experiment
Is Now CLOSED.
Please Bookmark This Page And Re-Visit It
After April 7, 2008,
To See The Results Our Experiment Uncovers.
Better Yet --
Sign Up To Join The Great Email Experiment
Notification List NOW!
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And Notify You When The Complete Results
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