From my experience working for an Email Security, Hosting, Maintenance and Cloud Data backup service provider, I have come to learn a few tips on how to avoid emails getting bounced back. Just like corporations blocking Facebook from employees, if they feel an email is not related to the business, it will be filtered out on those rules.
Sometimes spam filters may mark your email as a false positive ( this is a legitimate message mistakenly marked as UBE *unsolicited bulk email* – or in other words junk email. Messages that are determined to be spam — whether correctly or incorrectly — may be rejected by a server or client-side spam filter and returned to the sender as bounce e-mail.
To give you an idea of how emails get marked as spam here’s a brief on how our Sangari Email Security Service works;
Sangari Email Security filters run on several levels, filtering mail before they hit the server, after the server and then again on an end user’s desktop. This creates three levels of defense for the end user and three levels of challenges for spammers. These filters look at the content of the email to make the decision of whether the email it is reviewing is spam or wanted email. As an email comes into to the filter, it is evaluated in many ways, such as words, phrases, links and image sizes and is assigned a score. The score determines if it will be marked as spam or not. *A more detailed explanation can be given upon request or by viewing our website See http://www.msgafrica.net/sangari.html*
Now that you have a better idea how a spam filter works,here are some best practices to avoid getting a ‘false positive’:
- Be sure you are sending relevant emails to people who have explicitly and deliberately opted-in to your list. Creating complaints creates higher scores against you.
- Do not send an all-image emails – it may look beautiful, but not to spam filters. Review your image to text ratio in the email. Filters will assume that the image might be hiding something. Plus, if subscribers have images turned off they won’t see anything when they open the email.
- Never use deceptive headers, From names, reply-to addresses, or subject lines.
- Always provide an unsubscribe link.The unsubscribe link must work for at least 30 days after sending.
- You must include your physical mailing address.
- Do not leave your CAPS LOCK WHICH IS LIKE SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS VIA EMAIL on for too long! Having subject lines or words with a lot of capitalization will cause high spam scores.
- Avoid the classic spammy words such as: FREE, s*x, BUY NOW, Vi*gra, ACT NOW, call now, apply now, great offer, buy one, join,“Click here!” , “Once in a lifetime opportunity!” etc.
- Avoid using bright red or green colored fonts.
- Keep subject lines short and simple, no one wants to read the entire offer in the subject line. Use your brand name to build positive points.
- Avoid the overuse of common punctuations such as exclamation points, dollar signs and question marks (!!!!, $$$$, ???,)
- Avoid links that land you on a page of just an image, which is considered suspect by filters. Make the landing page legit with text so you do not appear to be hiding anything.
- Do not send emails with attachments! Some filters cannot get into them to read and this is also a very common way for malicious viruses to spread and is always suspicious to filters.
Finally, email reputation is influenced by how recipient networks interpret your mail traffic. Each time you send “spam” or try to deliver to a non-existent user, a database records this against your IP address. Over time, “bad behavior” gives your mail server a bad reputation, which may cause you to be added to global real-time black lists (RBLs). Sangari Email Security streamlines, automates and manages the abuse of email accounts and your mail server preventing you from being blacklisted and consequently getting bounce back emails.
Feel free to contact me for more information, I would be happy to share more on how to improve your Corporate email communication!
