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Hi Blog,

One of my random and fairly frequent rituals is to look at the most recent five to ten opt-ins on my email list.

In my CRM (Kartra), you can hover your mouse over each email address and see the tags assigned. It is a nice, quick, easy way to do a spot check on what people are reading and what brought them into my world.

Occasionally, I will see a red dot next to the name.

That can signify one of a few things, like the email bounced and is undeliverable, or Gmail is saying the email doesn’t exist.

Sometimes it means someone reported my email as spam.

You can see that quickly as well, with a simple hover over the red dot.

In this case, the red dot was a spam complaint.

That is going to happen, especially the larger you build your list (which can make it a frequent occurrence).

But I clicked on the lead to see the details…

Oddly, this person, AJ, if that is his real name, downloaded one of my free books and then, when he received the next email from me, reported it as spam.

Aside from the obvious gratitude and scarcity mindset issues this person has, a simple opt-out of the list would do. The very definition of Spam is receiving an email you did not give permission to send to you. Yet he gave me permission the day before.

I am not complaining, though, because this is the exact opposite of the person I want on my list.

This is the equivalent of a Freebie Hit and Run:

* Get the free book. * Try to do some damage (mark email as spam). * And then get away scot free.

My emails aren’t for everyone, although he will never know.

The irony is, marking spam for something you opted-in for probably does him far more damage than it does me.

The CRMs nowadays track emails that do that, and share that information across many platforms.

When you email frequently, which I do, you see it all the time.

I have people who opt in for a summit, or something else, and then tell me they never got the confirmation email.

That is because most platforms have already marked their email as “undeliverable” or “spam complainer” and they don’t even know it.

Email reputation works both ways (so does Karma).

The further irony of the timing of this minor event was that I just taught a section in my Summit Lab Pilot course about the need to get on other people’s lists as the beginning of getting to know them.

That lesson is the exact opposite of AJ who is out there permanently burning bridges (some he doesn’t even know about yet, because of his email opt-in reputation and most influencers can look people up in there system).

The internet never forgets. Nor do influencers.

But for every AJ, there are thousands upon thousands of abundance-minded readers waiting for your next email.

They will tell you that, and it is very rewarding.

That is why I recommend you build your email list asap.

_Leap. Love. Grow._

RAY BREHM

P.S. This month’s Youru.tv framework is EMAIL FOR AUTHORS, a simple framework and mindset for creating and running your email list.

If you are intimidated about starting a list and sending emails, this might be for you.

If you are an AJ, it probably isn’t.

https://www.youru.tv [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/ejI8cgC0v3lF/DGoV]