Today I received the following email from one of my autoresponder services. It was sent to their customers on September 14 but due to a misspelling in my email address, I didn't get a copy until they responded to a service request I sent yesterday.
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Dear DemandMail Customer,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your patronage of the DemandMail system. We have been providing the best quality autoresponder marketing system for over three years and I hope it has been a benefit to you.

As I am sure you are aware the email marketing environment has become very challenging recently because of the mis-use by some and the continuing new laws regarding the transmission of email.

First we had the enactment by the US Government of the Can-Spam act and most recently the enactment of laws by Utah and Michigan called the child protection laws. These later laws allow anyone to bring suit against someone who sent an email to a child in their state that contains prohibited material. The problem is that the there is no definition of what prohibited material is.

Additionally, they do not freely publish "don't email" list. You can wash lists through their system but at a cost per email that in our opinion is prohibitive.

Because of these developments we have determined it is too risky to provide the DemandMail service and take the risk of multiple lawsuits, fines, and imprisonment that this legislation provides.

So it is with great sadness that I must inform you that DemandMail will be closing it doors on October 1, 2005. It has been our great pleasure to serve you over these many years and I personally want to thank you for your business.
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I am sharing this message with you because I used this service for more than 3 years and had more than 4/5 of my subscribers located there.

Now even though I have backups of my subscriber lists and can import those names into a new autoresponder the impact of losing a fundamental business service is not inconsequential.

I know this from experience.

You see, a little over 3 years ago, I had this same thing happened to me with a different autoresponder service.

Because spam was becoming such a big issue and the service I was using had received enough complaints about various customers they decided to close down early and avoid the rush.

Since double opt-in was a way to avoid most spam complaints, I chose that route when I imported my list to a different service. Unfortunately, unexpected confirmation requests are usually deleted so I experienced a 96% loss of my subscribers. Because I again won't be able to tell my subscribers to expect a confirmation request, I expect the same type of loss.

With all the new legislation and legal threats it looks like double opt-in autoresponder service providers are running scared and I don't think their fears are unjustified. I do think that many legitimate service providers and users will suffer more than those who are causing the problem.

But this tip is not an editorial about spam and it's impact on online business. It's about determination.

You see, if I wasn't determined, now would be a great time to give up.

But I am not giving up. Instead, I'll salvage what I can, try to implement a plan to avoid going through this a third time and go on.

Remember, if you are going to succeed online you must be determined. You must be able to recover from things like your website being down or hacked, losing your hosting or autoresponder service, receiving "not nice" email, being accused of spam and a host of other things that can and do happen everyday to legitimate online business people.

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Susan Carroll is the owner of http://www.friendswhocare.us and has formed a global community of online business people through her weekly newsletter.

Susan recently opened a free membership area where she offer's her subscribers both a way to be recognized for working their business plus free and discounted tools to assist them. http://www.friendswhocare.us/join.htm

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.
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