Buondì.
Every February and November we run a ‘FREE Trial Italian lesson’ offer, which means giving away an online lesson with one of our experienced Italian native-speaker teachers, normal price £20, to up to a hundred and fifty lucky people around the world, no strings attached.
Many of our several hundred regular online students started that way, which is of course why we do it – try one before you buy one is impractical on a day-to-day basis, but a couple of times a year we offer precisely that opportunity, deliberately in quiet times between sales, ebook publications, and so on.
And guess what? It’s almost November! But this, from Valerie, who I’m sure won’t mind me replying to her comment this way:
Daniel, once again your wonderful thrice weekly emails have stopped coming. Last time I resubscribed but I have tried that again and nothing has happened. I have checked my spam folder and even checked optus webmail online and they are nowhere to be found. For some reason I get the ones describing the ebook of the week but no others. Any suggestions please?
And Valerie is by no means alone. You WOULD NOT BELIEVE how many people have bought the half-price ‘eBook of the Week’ and yet not received the email containing the download link!
Once I’ve weeded out the people who don’t read the emails our shop sends them immediately after their payment (most of whom are considerate enough to be embarrassed to admit the fact once I’ve had the shop resend the email with the download link and it has arrived safely), and the iPhone and iPad users who have their email apps set to save data charges by showing an empty spam folder, what it mostly boils down to is…
AUSTRALIAN EMAIL PROVIDERS
Anything ending with .au, in fact. They seem to just hate my stuff, and won’t let their users see it. OK, I can live with that, though it’s a terrible waste of time constantly having to help people realise that their email providers are FILTERING THEIR EMAILS BEFORE THEY EVEN SEE THEM.
The irony, though, is evidenced by what Valerie writes: “For some reason I get the ones describing the ebook of the week but no others”.
Why is that ironic, you may ask? Well, because Valerie has actively chosen to receive emails like this one (which it seems she will never read, poverina) by ‘opting in’. You know, when you have to click a link to confirm that you want to receive the emails. That. The OnlineItalianClub.com mailing list is enormous, expensive to run, but ethically- and professionally-managed by a respected American company. Approximately 25-30% of the maybe fourteen thousand club members open each of these articles, as you presumably have done. Which is pretty good by industry averages. And the ones who don’t like what I write simply scroll down to the bottom and click the ‘unsubscribe’ link (if that’s you, why not give it a try right now?)
WHEREAS, when I send something out from our online shop, EasyReaders.Org, promoting, say, the FREE Trial Lesson Offer (next week), or an ‘eBook of the Week’ offer, well that goes to a different list, one composed of customers and potential customers (people who’ve downloaded a free ebook, for example). And that different list, I admit with not a little shame, does not insist on people clicking a link, and so is undeniably ‘spammier’.
See the joke? Valerie gets the spam I send her (though she doesn’t seem to mind) but not the ‘wonderful’ articles that she has repeatedly asked to receive.
And why might that be? Well, there’s no surprise there. Our ‘spamier’ content is sent out by an (equally respected but not-quite-so-insistent-on-ethical-behavior) AUSTRALIAN company!
If you’ve finding this difficult to follow, then I’ll summarise: emails to the club list get ‘filtered’ out as spam by various Aussie email providers even though their customers have specifically given me permission to send them witty remarks, assorted rants, and information on ways to improve their Italian.
But when I have bills to pay, so hit the ‘hard sell’ button on the ‘shop’ list, thereby emailing promotional content to many tens of thousands of people, who may not be enthusiastic followers of my writing, the emails get through! Because they’re sent from down-under, which I suppose makes them OK. Go figure. (That reminds me: https://youtu.be/XfR9iY5y94s.)
Well anyway, Valerie, and all you others who are not reading this, and/or not getting emails from our shop software when you buy an ebook, the solution is simple: get yourself a decent email address, and use it when you would prefer to choose for yourself what emails you receive, rather than have a poorly-programed server decide for you.
GMAIL is good, and free, and I’m sure the other global providers like Yahoo or Microsoft are similarly reliable. Personally, I’ve been using GMAIL for decades and have never, not on a single occasion, not received an email that was sent to me that I wanted to see. It’s a fact that GMAIL sends a lot of things to Spam, even things I want to see. But when I look there for missing emails, there they always are.
A word to the wise, and I’m sure there are many wise in Australia (also whys, as in ‘why don’t I get your articles any more?’) Ragazzi, get yourself a decent email address, per favore! Then sign up to the club again using that. Problem solved.
Bene. Watch this space on Monday for details of how (and why) to get a FREE TRIAL LESSON with a club teacher.
Don’t forget this week’s ‘Half Price eBook of the Week Offer’, which ends on Sunday night (details below).
And finally, don’t worry if something goes wrong – payment issues, missing download links, and so on – as I’m always available to help. Just email your issue and I will respond, mostly politely. Customer service is my life.
No, really!
A lunedì.
P.S.
This week’s ‘Half Price eBook of the Week Offer’ ends on Sunday night. ‘Il campo di papaveri’ is the story of a struggling young artist who falls in love with his landlord’s daughter.
It comes in two VERSIONS (you should choose the one you prefer, not buy both), the ‘easy reader’ version (text, glossaries, exercises and online audio) and the ‘parallel text’ version. If you have a Kindle, choose the former, as the parallel text is only in the default .pdf, due to the special formatting needed to show line-by-line translations.
Once again I will mention that after your payment clears, you should read all the emails the shop sends you, even the boring ones, the ones with words like ‘order completed’ or ‘invoice’ in the subject lines. One or more of them will contain the download link you need to get your ebook.
And here are those links again:
‘Easy reader’ version | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | ‘Parallel text’ version | FREE sample chapter (.pdf)
Or you could browse the Catalog for material which suits your current level in Italian.
P.P.S.
Thursday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news is waiting for you to read/listen to it.
If you find our EasyItalianNews.com content useful (it’s sent out to nearly 7500 people by yet another company, and not from Australia…), why not help us out with a donation?
Many thanks, by the way, to those of you who already have.
Così.