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A Serious Problem We're Trying to Address
Fri., Mar. 1. 2024 2:28pm EST
We've recently become aware of a technological problem that is having a serious adverse effect on this ministry: Gmail has gradually been blocking the ApX newsletter to about 90 percent of our subscribers who use gmail over the past three months.
To make matters worse, more of our subscribers by far use Gmail than on any other individual carrier. It's the largest email service in the world. Obviously, it's frustrating. We're still not sure why they did that or how the other 10 percent got through.
We don't knowingly send our newsletters to anybody who didn't sign up for them. And anytime somebody requests to unsubscribe, we try to take care of that immediately. Conversely, we don't want the people who do want our newsletter to be denied the opportunity to receive it.
Unfortunately, we didn't realize this was happening until recently. In the past few weeks, a number of fans have contacted us and asked why they haven't been getting the newsletter for the past month or two. As it turned out, they were all gmail users.
Consequently, our overall newsletter readership decreased by almost 50 percent between November and February. Moreover, some fans have reported trouble accessing our website at certain times, particularly if they are using their phones.
All of this is having a crippling effect on the band's finances. Because so many subscribers didn't get our newsletters, they missed our last appeal letter and our last matching-donation offer, not to mention announcements about new singles and CDs.
We have a team of computer-expert friends (including, but not limited to, both of our webmasters) working on these problems. We're also looking into restructuring our website (and the way it operates) and changing the way we send out newsletters.
Please pray for God's wisdom and provision for us during this time. Although it is a frustrating time, we believe God will get us through this and will use it to actually bring lasting improvements.
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