Foiling Spammers - Best Email Practices

How many times have you complained to someone that you did not receive the email they claim to have sent, only to discover it arrived in your junk mail folder? Or you have repeatedly requested information from someone, and they finally respond that their email filter thought it was spam? And how often have you opened your email only to find that same dreaded spam?

These situations can cause more problems than just being aggravating. They waste time and cause miscommunications and hard feelings. In short, they cause you to lose time and money. These are not things you want customers and clients to associate with you and your business.

Here are some things you may want to consider:

Don’t put your email on your website. Well that just sounds like crazy talk, right? Of course, your website needs your email information, how else will your customers reach you?  But instead of using text, insert a picture of the address. This makes it practically impossible for spambots, programs dedicated to finding email addresses and sending spam, to send you anything.

Be aware of what spam is. Did you just win an Amazon gift card? And all you have to do is provide your social security number to verify your identity? This is spam. Remember these three old adages: 

• If it’s too good to be true, it probably is, 
• There’s a sucker born every minute, and 
• If you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s probably you. 

Be very wary of offers in your email that come from suspicious email addresses. Be sure not to click on the links in these emails. INCLUDING unsubscribing to the email. Be safe and just delete it.

Make sure your messages are authenticated. Authenticated methods are set up at your domain provider. They help protect recipients from malicious email and are less likely to be rejected or marked as spam.

Only send messages to people who want messages from you. Make sure you are sending to current customers and people on your subscription list, so that they are not reporting you as sending spam. 

Add your contacts to your safe list.  This is one of the best and easiest ways to keep your customers out of your junk mailbox.

Don't expose others' email addresses by mailing multiple people in the TO: field. If manually sending to multiple addresses, put the addresses in the BCC field so recipients’ addresses are protected.

Remember that the spam business is very profitable and ever-changing, so from time to time, do a little research on ways to prevent it. Keeping updated is a best practice for keeping your customers happy.