I think the author of this article might be taking things a little to the extreme. E-mail is not working so great this week, that’s for sure. But it’s always gonna be fine for one-to-one communication. Our spam filters did great this week. Unfortunately, if you’re writing to us from an @aol, @hotmail or @yahoo account, your mail is sitting in a “quarantine bin.”
Few professionals (and that includes most of your target audience) are stopping to look at anything coming from those domains anymore. It’s because those domains are “spoofed” most often into spam. Free=unread.
Rule #1: Either get your own domain name, or use a messaging service with a proven track record of busting through spam filters. (Or do both.)
Rule #2: For your newsletter, use a list hosting service that has relationships with major server admins. Again, this might cost you more, but it will get your message through.
Rule #3: Encourage your audience members to enter you into their “whitelist” before they forget they signed up for your list.
Rule #4: Use a good spam filter solution yourself, to keep your own inbox manageable. Rule #5: Remind folks when you communicate on your site that if you don’t respond, assume their message is in the filter. People are starting to get it.