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Wowhead Newsletter - Fake or True?
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Post by
MustaCWN
Hi guys,
Just got an e-mail that is supposed to be the "Wowhead Newsletter - Issue 1"
Is it for real? Or someone is trying to trick me?
The sender info read as follow:
feedback@wowhead.com via email.lolking.net
Didnt find anything about a newsletter in the page, so... Should I mark it as Spam, or relax and enjoy?
Thanks,
Musta
Post by
perculia
Hey there,
All users who have visited the site in the past year were sent a copy of the newsletter today. We're going to try for it once a month and for major patches :)
Gmail users are reporting the email.lolking.net display issue (Lolking is another site owned by ZAM), which we are looking into.
Post by
MustaCWN
Thanks Madam, :)
Its just never to much to be sure of where do we click ;)
Post by
Dirtyshadow
SERIOUSLY! Its really yours. It major league failed my checklist for spam!
The Links on that Newsletter are TERRIBLE!
* They dont go directly to www,wowhead,com
* The links on the email did not show up when googled.
* The links "www,lolking,net" had no relation directly to wowhead when searched. Only an indirect relationship as being part of the same "network". Also "lolking,net"... further searching could not prove if email.lolking.net was owned by lolking.net.
* The links included very long strings of random generated alphanumeric coding. (commonly seen on spam or tracking links)
* The address the email came from was "feedback@wowhead" an existing email but out of context for a newsletter.... normally a newsletter would come from "newsletter@wowhead" or "noreply@wowhead"
* The "send us an email" link... didnt actually link to directly to "feedback@wowhead", another spamm-like link is there in its place
* There is no mention on the front of your website that you have a newsletter or are sending one out now.
Surprise Newsletters... GREAT IDEA *facepalm*
For all intents and purposed it look like a very well formated.... PIECE OF SPAM used for ACCOUNT HACKING!
For a company about gaming, representing gamers, aimed at a community that gets spam relentlessly telling them their WoW Account / Blizzard Account is in trouble... I thought you would do better. For Shame!
P.S. I am marking it as SPAM! Until you learn to do better!
Post by
Sas148
We appreciate the feedback and I'd hope you'd recognize that this is a first for Wowhead and will take sometime to get perfect. Suggestions for improvements, such as you provided, are helpful and will be considered for future editions.
Post by
Dirtyshadow
A news article on your website announcing each newsletter would be a plus.
Also have the newsletter up on your website for those that prefer not to trust emails (given the prevalence of blizzard account spam/hacks).
The option to subscribe/unsubscribe, please add to the account/settings for wowhead.
Post by
perculia
Users who were active in the past year were sent Issue 1 of the newsletter--you can unsubscribe from the bottom of the newsletter.
A newsletter using the same format/coding was made for Lolking a few weeks ago and had positive feedback (I don't believe it was announced/reposted on their front page too)--however, we'll look into Wowhead-specific feedback on Monday and see if there's anything we can tweak for our users before the next issue. What works for Lolking users may not work for Wowhead ones as well. We appreciate the feedback and have a few weeks before the next one goes out to adjust things :)(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##perculia##DELIM##
Post by
Niaw
OK, so it was their first issue and there's clearly some things that need to be prettied up. It's cool that they're doing it though :)
But there's a decent way of providing feedback on this ("decent" as in these are regular human beings you're communicating with) and there's a totally abrasive, self-indulgent, I'm-going-to-milk-it-like-it's-the-worst-thing-ever way.
Post by
Dirtyshadow
I only put my tinfoil hat on when reading emails... I admit im critical, but as a form of external communications that represents a business or corporation as a whole, there is no undo to "send email".
Remember most emails sent to people nowadays are trying to lie cheat or steal from us. I get about 1 real email to 15 junk/spam, most of them trying to steal my identity or my bank/game/facebook account... when writing an email "Does this in anyway look like spam ?" is a major quality check.
and never doing something "big, new and different" on a Friday...
if your response to something will be going to "wait till Monday"
Post by
Mike
Nice layout, standard newsletter width. Just a couple grammatical errors, mainly {spaces} where they shouldnt and should be.
Since Wowhead strongly depends on its community, maybe a bit more user contribution to the newsletter? The user of the month is nice, but maybe add some hand picked forum threads, or user made guides.
Post by
Izichial
The unique IDs in the links were pretty clearly dictated by Marketing to track engagement.
This.
ETA: Also, there's this setting in the user settings:
ZAM General Newsletter
I'd like to receive general news and information from ZAM.
I have it unchecked. Even though it's a different newsletter category from "general news and information from ZAM", it feels kind if underhanded to be opted into this other mailing. Especially when the unsubscribe feature doesn't actually go to my Wowhead account, it goes to another unique-tagged link on Lolking.
And this.
How do I unsubscribe without using the link in the email? This was seriously unworthy of Wowhead.
Post by
Balgair
I was another one who had serious doubts about it being real - I did in the end trust it enough to read it but without allowing images to be shown as I was only 99% sure. I do think a frontpage message on Wowhead to warn people before it went out would've been a good thing, as a random mail out of nowhere has a lot of potential to be a phishing attempt.
One suggestion I have for future newsletters, is include the Wowhead username of the person you're sending it to - I never trust mails supposedly from Blizzard, my bank, Paypal, etc if they don't include anything that's specifically related to me, as that's a good indicator of it being fake. If it's got my full name on it though, I do (with obvious precautions such as not clicking links but logging in direct from the website). If this mail had began "Hello Balgair, here's our new newsletter etc etc" I'd have thought it seemed a lot more likely to be legitimate, since to have both my username and my email address would take a big database breach, while my email address alone could've come from anywhere.
Post by
lankybrit
/rages
I didn't get one. I didn't get one!
/checks spam folder
Oh nvm.
BTW: Agree with the others about the content. The only thing that was new to me was that there was a Brawlers Guild Guide that I was interested in checking out but there was no link.
Cheers.
Post by
perculia
Hmm--the Brawler's Guild guide for me works when I click on the yellow title, and on the image area when it loads. I'll pass it onto feedback though if it's not intuitive or plain didn't work for some users.
Re content: some of our dedicated users check the news page frequently, but others that visit Wowhead mainly by googling an item may not really use our newspage as much. We'll keep working on finding a balance with articles that keeps everyone happy. I would like to shuffle around the featured guides in the future--perhaps just keep the Wowhead guides for the special patch-related newsletters instead of the monthly ones.
Post by
lankybrit
There was no clickable area in the 'Featured Articles' section for me at all.
EDIT: Oh my, what a doofus. It was just because it was in my spam folder. Once I moved it to my inbox, the links were there. Sorry about that. So, good job on that.
Cheers.
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