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Spam email, also known as unsolicited commercial email, can be a huge annoyance. A report in Business Week magazine stated that ‘in a single day in May 2003, No. 1 Internet service provider AOL Time Warner (AOL) blocked 2 billion spam messages – 88 per subscriber – from hitting its customers’ email accounts. Microsoft (MSFT), which operates No. 2 Internet service provider MSN plus email service Hotmail says it blocks an average of 2.4 billion spams per day.’ The reason spam email has become so widespread is that an email can be created quickly and easily and sent at virtually no cost to the sender. Spammers also have clever methods for obtaining email addresses. They can use software called spambots to extract addresses from chat rooms, buy ‘opt-in’ email lists where clients visiting a site have answered yes to the question ‘would you like to receive email news letters from our partners?’ or they can conduct a dictionary search of email servers. This works using a piece of software that submits random variations of email addresses to test whether they are live and then builds a list. In order to overcome the problem of spam most email contacts have a spam filter in place to sift through incoming mail. The spam filter uses algorithms to analyse the text within the email and also analyses the sender address to see if this address has sent spam before. Some spammers have tried to get around the problem of text analysis by substituting part of a word with a number or symbol (e.g. S4LE) although most software will has now developed methods to pick up on these. Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses so it is important to make sure that your campaign will not be regarded as spam by your recipient’s spam filter. For this reason it is essential to always run a spam check on your email prior to sending using spam filter software. This way you can remove any words that may trigger the mail to be flagged up as spam. It is also a good idea to send your email campaigns via an email marketing service. This will help reduce the risk of being blocked as email marketing software is designed to pass through a filter offering personalised messages and an unsubscribe option. The software will also remove any defunct or incorrect email addresses which will work in your favour. Remember to always make sure your contacts have opted in to receiving your emails and ask them to add your sender address to their inbox to reduce the risk of your messages being flagged as spam. There are a wide range of email marketing services to choose from offering a variety of email marketing solutions, including personalised emails and easy mailing list management. These will help you reduce the risk of having your email campaigns blocked by a spam filter.
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