What is Spam Email? How to Avoid Being Flagged as Spam

What is Spam Email?

Spam is Free Speech Run Amok

Unfortunately, due to the amount of spam being sent to consumers and the safety precautions which email service providers have instigated to protect their user’s, your legitimate and requested email may be classed as spam if you’re not careful.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what makes an email spam, what those spam filters are, and how you can prevent your requested emails being classed as spam.

What is Email Spam?

Email spam, also known as junk email, unsolicited commercial email or unsolicited bulk email, is a subset of electronic spam involving nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Clicking on links in spam email may send users to phishing web sites or sites that are hosting malware. Spam email may also include malware as scripts or other executable file attachments. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. It is named for Spam luncheon meat by way of a Monty Python sketch in which Spam is depicted as ubiquitous and unavoidable. [wikipedia 2013]

• According to the MAAWG Email Metrics Program [maawg.org], the amount of spam email sent in the first half of 2010 was between 88-92% of email messages.

Definition: Email Spam

My definition of email spam is any email that meets any or all of the following criteria:

Unsolicited: The email is not requested by the recipients.

Opt-out: There is usually no way for a recipient to opt-out of future emails.

Data mining: The email promotes activities requiring the user to divulge sensitive financial or personal information.

Anonymity: The source and identity of the sender is anonymous.

CAN-SPAM Legislation

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), enacted the CAN-SPAM federal legislation act in 2003 to protect consumer rights end enacted strict fines and prohibitive penalties for any spammers who get caught.

While most consider the CAN-SPAM legislation to be ineffective at stopping email spam, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to follow it to the letter. CAN-SPAM is still active legislation, and violators of the legislation are subject to massive fines.

How Spammers Get Addresses

There are hundreds of companies ready and willing to sell you millions of valid email addresses gleaned from free offers, news groups, chat rooms, social networks and of course the Internet itself.

• Beware “opt-in” email lists asking, “Would you like to receive email newsletters from our partners?” If you answer yes, your email address may be sold to spammers.

Professional (not sure that’s the right word to call them) spammers create search engines (spambots) that spider the Internet specifically looking for telltale email address signatures such as the “@” sign or gmail. Probably the most common source of email addresses for spammers, however, is a “dictionary” search of the email servers of large email hosting companies.

As it cost the spammers practically nothing to send an email, even if they only get one sale in 10,000 emails it can still be quite lucrative for them.

Avoid Being Flagged as Spam

As email spammers get smarter and find new ways to evade the spam filters it becomes increasingly difficult to get your email delivered into your customers inbox and avoid being flagged as spam.

The good news is, if you follow some simple rules, send quality emails through a respected email service provider you should not have a problem.

What are Email Service Providers Checking

As a general rule, an email service providers advanced spam filters, known as heuristic and Bayesian filters, will look at the following:

Spam Blacklist: Email service providers use blacklists of domains and companies they will automatically filter out of their customers inbox. If you, your domain (see sender reputation) or company are on a blacklist you can kiss the inbox goodbye. In such situations you have no alternative but to begin your email marketing campaign from scratch.

Spam WhiteList: This is where you want to be. White lists are lists of domains or senders that are automatically approved for inbox deliverability without being subjected to spam filter review.

Sender Reputation: Your sender reputation is a number or score assigned to your sending IP or source. If you are using a third party email marketing platform it’s important that you select a service that has a high sender reputation such as AWeber, GetResponse or iContact, who protect their sender reputation by ensuring its clients don’t send spam emails.

Domain Reputation: In recent years, email service providers have started tracking domain reputations, that is, they identify the domain associated with the email and assign a spam score based on that domain’s email history. Unfortunately, if you are on a share server and someone on that server is blacklisted for sending spam you could be tarred with the same brush.

Spam History: If your email content has been consistently flagged as spam by your subscribers you will find yourself removed from the white list. If your emails are regularly deleted by the recipient without being opened, the email service providers may flag your emails as low quality, potentially unsolicited email and reduce your score. One of your top priorities in email marketing is to provide quality emails and reduce spam complaints.

Building a Great Email List

To ensure great email deliverability and avoid being flagged as spam build a great email list. Do not purchase or rent lists from sources you cannot trust. Always ensure your email leads have been generated using the double opt-in process where users must complete a sign-up box then click an email confirmation link in order to activate their subscription.

Don’t hide your unsubscribe link, in fact, make it very prominent. If users cannot unsubscribe quickly and easily they will simply hit the “Spam” button. Take every step you can take to reduce the number of spam complaints and build a great email list.

Apply for White List Acceptance

If you are using an outsourced email marketing platform such as those in my top recommended email marketing service providers list, the good news is that your marketing email will be kept separate from your corporate email.

If on the other hand you are building an in-house email marketing system, you will want to be recognised as a reputable, white list email sender. Yahoo!, AOL and several other major email service providers have white list applications processes that you can find online.

Manage Your Email Subject Line

Your email subject line is of paramount importance in determining your emails ability to enter the inbox.

Length: Don’t write long email subject lines. Aim for a maximum length of fifty characters using at least four for five words. The longer your email subject line, the more likely it will be flagged as spam.

Spam Words: Avoid using all caps or special characters. Try not to include “spam words” such as “Free”, “Make money”, etc. Just do a Google search for a complete list.

Don’t Write Content Full of Spam Words

Whilst it might seem obvious not to write content full of spam words, this rule is not so easy to implement. Would you consider, “Get your free credit report” as spam? I would not, yet it’s full of spam words.

• For the latest list of spam word just do a Google search for a complete list.

It’s important to understand the spam word themselves are not he trigger, it’s a combination of the words and context in which they are used. This means you may need to change your writing style if your emails consistently get flagged as spam.

Don’t Write Image Emails

As using a large image instead of text to circumvent spam filters is a frequent trick of email spammers, do not include large images in your emails. Emails consisting of one large image have a very high chance of being flagged as spam. Use images sparingly in your emails and keep them small.

What Makes an Email Spam Conclusion

It’s not that hard to avoid being flagged as spam, just stay away from the obvious traps and write quality email content with great offers. Make users want to receive your emails, not reach for the unsubscribe or spam button.

The single best solution is to build a great email list using quality sources and to use an outsourced email marketing provider such as those listed in my article, top recommended email marketing service providers. They will notify you if your emails are considered spam before the problems begin.

Well, I hope you found something useful and enjoyed this article, What Makes an Email Spam.