E-mails to AOL and Feedback Loops

AOL Feedback Loops

Even when you send legitimate e-mail newsletters you will often receive Spam Reports (titled "Client TOS Notifications") from AOL members. It seems that many people find it much easier to click a "This is Spam" button rather than follow the instructions to remove themselves. Unfortunately in order to comply with their own Privacy Policy, AOL strips all information that would identify the complainant from the message header, so you have no idea who to needs to be unsubscribed.

Here's how to use AOL's Feedback Loop system to identify and automatically remove any complainants from your mailing list:

1. Go to the AOL web site and complete the feedback loop form so that you are sent any Spam Reports that your mailer generates (you will need to supply your IP address).

Note: AOL seemed to ignore the form we submitted and so we needed to request the list of Spam Reports from our host provider

2. Go into File > Options, Sending Emails, "Other Sending Options" and turn on the option to "Embed MemberID in header"

Alternatively (if you are sending an HTML format message) edit the HTML source to embed the MemberID (%Field:MemberID%) and/or the e-mail address (%Email%) within a hidden comment in the message, e.g.

3. Send your mail with a single recipient for each message (i.e. under File > Options, Sending, do not specify the option of multiple recipients per message).

4. Use Outlook Rules (Tools > Rules and Alerts in Outlook) to move all messages with the subject "Client TOS Notification" to a special folder

5. Click the "Folder Processing Tasks" button in MLK under File > Options, Email Processing. Create a new task to process messages found in the folder specified in 4., retrieve addresses from all fields and process them as unsubscribes.

Alternatively you can process them manually using "List > Add Addresses from Outlook Folders"