The problem of spam emails has recently attracted much attention. The most common type of spam is advertising mail. Getting caught in spam is a sad story for any business. In addition to obvious problems, such as deterioration of statistics of letters, and loss of trust of readers and providers, spam can bring additional troubles. The domain immediately falls under the distribution, and the risk of blocking the domain puts both further and current mailings at risk. Here comes the easy-to-follow guide for readers on effective strategies for managing and minimizing the risk of their emails being caught by spam filters.
What is spam?
Spam is defined as unsolicited email sent in large numbers. According to Dataprot, in 2022, almost 56.5% of all emails were identified as spam. That’s an average of 122.33 billion messages worldwide every day. Modern postal services are concerned about the safety of users. They strengthen the precautionary measures. As a result, even those emails that are not spam can fall. In order not to end up in spam, letters should not only be interesting to the audience but also not cause questions to email providers.
Why an ordinary letter can end up in SPAM and how SPAM filters work
Each mail service has special filters that, based on a certain list of criteria, define a letter as a spam message and can send it to the spam folder.
These settings may differ for each postal service. They are constantly updated and transformed. Therefore, there is no clear recipe for avoiding email going to spam. But there are basic rules. They can stop emails from going to spam and improve the chances of the letter reaching the addressee.
How to avoid email going to spam
Do not write spam phrases in the letter.
Usually, these are fairly common advertising phrases that everyone has already had enough of: “A profitable offer! We return the money! Action! Get a discount! Learn the secret of success!”
The letter must contain text.
If you are sending a letter in the form of a postcard or banner, be sure to add a few text phrases. If the email contains only images, it qualifies as a suspicious one.
Pay attention to the formatting and design
How to reduce spam email in this case? Filters respond to too bright font colors or highlights, too many caps locks and exclamation marks, as well as text copied from the Word editor.
In addition, it is worth knowing that each email account has its reputation. There are different levels of it. If the level is the lowest, red, then all emails will go to the spam folder. Therefore, you should take care of the “purity of the biography”. Do not send any intrusive messages. These simple recommendations will give you a clue on how to avoid spam filters.
Is getting to the spam folder your only problem?
When you send hundreds of letters as a part of your business, it means that you need a lot of space on your device. If you save emails on your hard drive one day you can receive a message “Your startup disk is almost full”. In this case, you run out of space to save all your letters. Besides, your disk works slowly. It is annoying indeed. It also causes your Macbook to overheat. For tips on checking your Mac’s temperature, visit this detailed guide. Yet, there is good news. It is easy to clean your disk especially if you use MacBook. If your Mac disk is full, you can try to delete apps and browser cache, take out the trash, or remove IOS backups. Another problem can arise when you see no startup disk Mac error message. If so, you can repair the startup disk MacOS recovery mode, replace the disk, or make it appear in the disk utility.
Spam filters and how they work
Image Credit:Freepik
Email providers spend a lot of time-fighting suspicious messages. Five types of filters reduce spam emails.
- CONTENT FILTERS
All spam emails have one goal. It is to convince the recipient to perform any action. That is why most of them include the same set of keywords. Content filters are designed to block any email that uses these words too often.
- BLACK LIST
Blacklist filters block email addresses that are used to send spam. But it is quite easy to bypass them due to the constant change of email addresses. That is why blacklists are constantly updated.
In this way, a kind of race occurs – attackers try to use new addresses faster than the recipient adds them to the blacklist.
- HEADLINE FILTERS
All emails contain headers. A header is a piece of code that contains information about an email, such as the sender’s IP address. Header filters use this information to decide if an email is suspicious.
- RULE-BASED FILTERS
Rule-based filters allow the user to define what is considered spam. For example, if you notice that emails always contain certain keywords, you can enable the feature to automatically delete any email that contains them. This type of filter can be used to remove emails from specific senders.
- BAYESIAN FILTER
Bayesian filters examine user behavior. Whenever you mark an email as spam, the Bayesian filter records your preferences and filters out all subsequent similar emails.
5 common mistakes that send emails to spam
- Sending letters from a personal or unprepared account
Ordinary mail accounts are intended for personal correspondence. Mass mailing of messages will look suspicious to providers and will most likely end up in the spam box.
Emails on behalf of companies require an account with their domain. An email domain is the name you use to send emails on behalf of your company. It should be professional and easily recognizable.
A few tips for looking like a professional email domain:
- The domain name should match your company or brand name.
- Choose a short and simple domain name that is easy to remember.
- Domains with the extension .com are the most recognizable and have more trust among recipients.
- Preparing an email account is the next step that should not be neglected when planning mass mailings.
- Do not configure authentication through SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records
These abbreviations represent the numeric entries you need to add to your DNS server to set up your domain to send emails correctly. These records are designed to protect the sender’s data from interception and tampering. If they are available on the server, the spam filter can check the sender and identify it as valid.
SPF. By configuring this entry, you add your server and IP address to the global list of servers and IPs from which mail can be sent. SPF tells postal services that the message was sent specifically from your domain. This practice prevents fraudulent mailings from other IPs on your behalf.
DKIM is a digital signature for messages that is encrypted using keys. Thanks to it, each letter contains information about who and when it was sent the sender’s data.
DMARC is the final level of validation that determines what the mail provider should do if SPF and DKIM verification fails.
- Buy or collect a database of email addresses from open sources
Buying or collecting a database of email addresses from open sources, in social networks, or on forums can lead to some problems and undesirable consequences, such as:
- Poor interaction
Sending to an unproven base can lead to low engagement, low open rates, and lots of unsubscribes, all of which will damage your reputation with spam filters.
- Low conversion
Recipients who are unfamiliar with you and your product are unlikely to engage with your content.
- Spam
Sending emails to people who have not given their permission is considered spam. Also, be aware that in European countries spam is regulated by legislation (GDPR) and therefore can lead to more trouble than bad engagement.
How to avoid:
Create a database of email addresses using legitimate methods, for example, a subscription form through the site (double-opt-in), and offer contacts valuable content that will match their interests. Carefully read the rules for sending emails in the countries you plan to include in the newsletter.
- Use of prohibited words and symbols
Most email providers and recipients have built-in filters that look for specific keywords commonly found in spam messages. These include words related to scams, drugs, financial gain, and other popular topics. For example: “earn”, “free”, “win”, “treatment”, “weight loss”, and “guarantees”, as well as the symbols “$”, and “100%”.
How to avoid forbidden words in a letter:
- do not use words or phrases that sound provocative;
- use professional vocabulary and realistic promises in the text of the letter;
- test your emails for spam before sending them to make sure they don’t contain banned keywords.
- Do not check the reputation of the domain
Each domain has its history and reputation, and spam filters take this into account when evaluating your emails. Domain reputation affects how you are perceived by mail services, filters, and recipients. Therefore, the success of mailings directly depends on the state of the domain.
Conclusion
Spam is a sensitive topic in any e-mail. There is no one-size-fits-all “How to never get spammed” advice, but there are many methods to protect your emails and your domain from the spam marker that we mentioned above.
