Avoid Genuine Emails Being Tagged As Spam

The E-mail Spam Problem

Everyone dislikes spam and will make efforts in order to get rid of it. Sometimes, however, even those important emails may find themselves sitting along with spam mail in the junk mailbox.

For businesses that are sending emails, it’s important to make sure that their genuine email does not look like spam and does not prompt the email to go to the spam folder of the receiver.

The two main factors here are emails being sent with red flags that trip spam filters and are not reviewed in the thrash folder before it is emptied. In addition, many emails bounce-back and are returned to its sender. These emails are wrongly assumed to be the cause of a server problem that is not operating effectively. However, in reality the fact is that the emails are returned because they are blocked as the email client thinks it’s spam.

For this reason, email senders should be aware of issues that might stop the tagging of their email being spam. Through out the day, many legitimate and genuine emails reach the spam - or junk folder - or an inbox as the sender is not aware of small settings that could trigger spam folders. In fact, many web server email clients are very stringent with letting emails pass. They return the emails that top a certain score before they are even sent to the receiver.

What do genuine email senders do if their email is tagged as spam? Learn how minimize the chances of your email being tagged as spam.

Simple Guidelines

There are a few tasks tha can be done to ensure that email which is sent is not targeted or tagged as spam.

• A brief, precise, and apt subject must be included in all emails as many email clients auto-send subject-less emails to the junk or spam folder.
• Avoid using terms like hello, hi, help, new, stuff, etc. in the subject of the email as these words trigger the spam filters.
• The subject must be typed appropriately and correctly. Also, take into consideration the capitalization, structure, and punctuation. All CAPS LOCK or all small case gives a picture of it being spam when in reality it is most usually just laziness.
• Abstain from using common terms that are used by spammers in the subject line or the first paragraph of the email. All email users have surely come across such emails as each receives them in huge numbers. Many spam filters track the words and term the email as spam.
• It is advised to make sure that a name is displayed in the FROM field. Many a times, email senders use lowercase and punctuation marks that indicate the email sender to be a spammer.
• Whenever deleting emails from the spam folder, it does not hurt to take a quick peak through it. You might be able to recognize some genuine email there.

Following these simple guidelines does not guarantee a hundred per cent chance that your email will reach the intended person, but it does increase chances that it will be received. While it may be annoying, you should still check to make sure that important mail isn’t going to your junk folder. The best way, depending on the program you use, is to set up rules to make sure that certain email goes to certain folders; in some programs, you may be able to block the sender of a spam email, making sure that they can not send you any more messages.

Image content @ Microsoft Outlook