Beginning on October 1st, Gmail began sending emails from The White Coat Investor to your spam folder rather than your inbox. Or worse, it marked them as a “phishing” attempt. Nothing changed here at The White Coat Investor (and we're certainly not phishing), but I've been getting bombarded with emails from those of you who follow the blog by email letting me know about it. That's okay, I like hearing from you when there is a problem. But there's a bigger issue- my email open rate has dropped by 70%. That means only 30% of you who want to be getting WCI blog updates are actually getting them. Since 3/4 of you are using Gmail that's a problem, because it is severely compromising the primary mission of The White Coat Investor – to help those who wear the white coat to get a fair shake on Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the fix is not simple. I cannot just call up Gmail and request my emails be whitelisted. We're already following good email practices such as being authenticated, requiring you to agree to receive emails from us, and providing an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email. This fix actually has to occur at your end. I'm hoping that, like herd immunity with a good vaccine, if enough of you fix it at your end, that Gmail will quit sending my emails to spam for all of you. Here's what I need you to do:
# 1 Add my email address to your contact list, or at least your safe sender list
Here's how you add an email address to your contact list:
- Open Gmail
- Click on the squares at the upper right to open menu
- Click on contacts
- Add email address to list
If you're using an email program like Thunderbird, Outlook, or Apple Mail, the process will be slightly different, but should be pretty straightforward. If you luckily found this post in your email, it may be easiest to just click on the link at the top of it. I'll keep that link at the top of emails going out, at least for a while.
# 2 Make a special effort for the next few weeks
Please, please, please, make a special effort for the next few weeks to do four things.
- Actually open my emails (even if you don't have time to read them)
- Do not mark any of my emails spam or phishing
- Check your spam folder for my emails
- If you find one or more of my emails in the spam folder, mark it (them) as NOT SPAM (see below)
- If you get a message that my email contains suspicious links, please mark it as NOT PHISHING.
If you get this message, click “Learn More”, then select “NOT PHISHING”
Again, we're not sending out suspicious phishing links. The emails we're sending are the same as you've always gotten.
Thank you very much for your assistance. Not only will it help you, but hopefully it will help thousands of other white coat investors. And of course, if you ever feel like you're getting too many emails from me, there are other options besides just unsubscribing. Just go into your preferences and you can reduce the number of emails you get from me.
And as long as you’re going to all that trouble, please add [email protected] to your contact list, too!
Jim, I hope your email woes are resolved with these efforts.
Cheers!
-PoF
In Gmail, when I hover over an email sender’s name, a box pops up and I have the option to “add to contacts” with just one click.
Cool. Hopefully that makes it easier for people.
Adding you to contacts did not solve the issue for me. I had to create a “filter” to send the emails to inbox instead of spam, which was more complicated than it sounds.
Grrr. Hopefully it gets better soon. I had a reader that works at Google look into whether he can help or not.
Jim, I use gmail and I’ve never had your emails marked as spam, including the one you sent this morning. Instead, your mail goes to the “Updates” tab. Perhaps this happens because I almost always open your mail?! In any case, I didn’t need to change anything.
Glad to hear it. I wish that was the case for everyone.