My thanks to Mark Hendricks for this next tip. In his blog, Mark tells how one of his broadcast emails he sent out recently had many, many “bounce-backs”. It turns out that, although his URL was OK, he’d put a link to another site in his email - and the URL of that site had been marked (rightly or wrongly) of being a sp@mmer.

Mark points out that you can avoid this problem by using a “redirect” URL - similar to all those IanSays.com links you see in “Marketing Update”! But if you have to put someone else’s web address in an email, how can you tell if it’s OK?

Well, there’s a very neat online tool which checks any domain you enter against all the blacklists. If it comes up with a result marked in red, then don’t put it in an email. You can find this tool here:

http://www.IanSays.com/Useful/URLCheck.htm

Use the “All RBL” option to get the best results. Oh, and all of my domains get the green light

You can read Mark’s blog here:

http://www.IanSays.com/Hendricks/blog.htm