ATTENTION: If Your Subscribers Use Gmail Read This

If you have an email list then I'm willing to bet you have at least one subscriber who uses Gmail. Probably a whole lot more since millions of people use it as their primary email system world-wide. I do.

In the past couple of weeks I noticed in some of the emails I received, some URLs were clickable and others were not. I didn't spend enough trying to figure it out but it perplexed me, especially on the emails I sent out that had links to register for programs or product specials.

Thanks to a post on Alex Mandossian's Productivity Strategies Facebook page, I learned this is a bug, or maybe it's deliberate, that cropped up in February. Alex directed his readers to Frank Bauer's blog with a video explaining the problem and what to do about it.

Essentially, any URL that has a capital letter after the http:// is not an active, clickable link in Gmail. I sent myself an email to test it out:

You can see that the top URL is not active whereas the others are. The other variations are all active. So either use a lowercase letter or www right after the http://

I usually omit the www and I almost always capitalize words since the URLs read better and are better for branding purposes. I'll probably add the www. now so I can keep on capitalizing.

What does this mean? Take a look at the autoresponders you have set up. Until this is resolved by Google, you better make sure all your promotional links are clickable which means reviewing all your email messages. What a pain! Seems like a good task for a VA.

I have dozens of autoresponders each with multiple messages. But if those links are promoting programs or services or resources, then they sure better be clickable because most people will not take the time to copy and paste a link in to their browser address bar and you could be leaving money on the table.

Comments

[Denise Wakeman]

If you're curious about my email signature that you see in the screenshot of this post, I use WiseStamp to create it. Here's a post about how I use it:
http://www.biztipsblog.com/2010/01/showcase-your-blog-with-wisestamp-in-your-email.html

[Casey Truffo]

Denise,
Bless you for passing this along! Wow!
Casey Truffo

[Marion Ryan]

Denise

Thanks for sharing that. Now you mention it I had noticed that something was odd with certain emails I was receiving but would never have worked that one out!

Many thanks

Marion

[Tishia Lee]

Thanks for sharing this valuable information! I had noticed that some of the newsletters I'd been getting lately I couldn't click their links and I just went back through and looked at 1 I remembered off the top of my head and they had used caps in the URL with no www. before it! I'll be sure to email them and let them know this! Again thanks for sharing this!

[Julie]

WOW. Thank you, Denise. That's a big deal, and I would never have known. Thank you!

[Tara Kachaturoff]

Denise: Thanks for sharing this important information. Really appreciate it. I've RT'd your post.

Kind Regards,
Tara

[ThomasMangum]

WOW Thanks for this Denise. SOOOO glad I clicked through on this one. This has significant impact!

[Timothy]

I just tested for myself and found no issue.

[Denise Wakeman]

Glad it's working for you, Timothy. I know it's been an issue for me and many others. It's only a problem, as far as I know, with URLs in Gmail. With millions of Gmail users, I want to make sure everyone on my lists can click through on my links if they want to.

[Loretta]

Wow, I never noticed that before. Thank you for pointing this out, definitely something to keep in mind when working on our follow up email message systems.