I’m curious if anyone else out there is dealing with a similiar issue? Each week we market via email to a large list of online subscribers. We call this SALEMAIL, and it’s revolutionized our business. On our home page we have a form to submit your email address. Subscribers receive weekly updates on product sales, etc. It’s something, in my opinion, each ecommerce biz should be doing. If you pay per click on the SE’s, or are just fortunate enough for someone to stumble into your site, it’s in your best interest to get their email so you can market to them. It’s a really straight forward way to spread the word, and shoot people into your site. The other great thing about it, is that people love to share. And they will forward your email to their friends who will then come in to the site, share their address, and the cycle continues. I love it.
Now, the problem here..despite the fact that these people do subscribe, apparently is that they forget that they do! Or maybe they are just in a nasty mood. However, some, when they get an email from us, click the “SPAM” button in their email window. This sends a notice to my server saying that RedHatsByYou.com is spamming. I, in turn, am subject to the subsequent reprimands of my server folk, and are threatened on an ongoing basis to lose my email priveleges. I’ve been told that if I keep those complaints to, say 3 or 4 a day, that they will let it go. Anything beyond that is a huge problem. So, I’ve been forced to limit my marketing campaigns to no more than 2000 emails per day. Since statistically that seems to yield the correct amount of SPAM ALERTS by my subscribers. This is really bumming me out. I have a lot of subscribers, and I need to hit more of them per day than that.
Is this a limitation by my server only? I am curious what services other ecommerce sites are using to market through. If anyone has any thoughts, please share!

I also wanted to note that I’ve redone all metatags and header information to include Robot direction, Keywords (exclusive to each page only), Expiration, Revisit-After, and finally, Distribution. In an issue of Practical Ecommerce last Fall, you talked about the importance of Site Maps. I immediately posted one on our server, and submitted it to all search engines. Is there a benefit to referencing this in my header? In other words, is there a way you can instruct crawlers in your header info to seek out that sitemap, or is that not advised? Just curious.
Now when I say I’ve redone header info, I’m referring to my pages I design in Adobe GoLive. That doesn’t include my pages in Miva (our shopping cart system). I have the option of using a “global header” in miva and have put all header information there excluding keywords which, I think, should be specific to the product. I have over 400 products…a bit of a daunting task!
I removed Reciprocal Links at the bottom of each page. This poses an interesting question though. I’ve been contaced by numerous “Online Marketing Companies” who swear by the power of reciprocal linking. What is the final word here? Does it help in your SE placement, or is that all bogus? Is there really any benefit to making a links page at all then?