Not Such A Good Name After All

I was quite pleased when I came up with the name 'It's Alive!', it has been one of my catchphrases for ages, and it led to the theme for the game. Generally the theme, the name and getting to cry out 'It's Alive!' at the end have been well received. However, it's not been without its problems.

I've been working my way through my backlist of pre-orders, emailing the customers to let them know that their copies are ready and how they can pay for the copies. Fourteen of the customers I had notified had yet to respond, either paying me, or letting me know they no longer wanted their copies. Over the last week or two I've found out that several of my emails have been falling foul of spam traps. Even my follow-up emails have been disappearing.

I've been trying to work out how to contact those people to work out whether they have received my emails and whether they still want the copy they have ordered. I've managed to get in contact with a couple through BoardGameGeek, which has no spam filter, but I don't know the username for most of them.

The other day The Wife suggested the problem may be the use of 'It's Alive!' or the exclamation mark in the subject which is causing the problem. It seemed like a very good point (I get lots of similarly titled emails suggesting I invest in one stock or another). As a result, today I sent an email to everyone who I had yet to hear from with 'Your Boardgame Pre-order' as the subject. Three of them have paid already, none had received my earlier emails. I think I've finally got to the bottom of that.