It is a war out there! Spammers are sending junk emails and people are protecting themselves with stronger and stronger spam filters. As a business web hosting company, we help set up spam filters. We also and answer questions as to why our clients emails are not making it through. So what are some things you can do to help legitimate email get through and not tagged as junk email?

So what kinds of things do spam filters look for?

1. Messages with multiple images.
2. Messages with highly formatted HTML
3. Using excess capital letters or punctuation
4. Using certain phrases such as free, trial, money, as seen on TV, and so on.
5. No subject line or a Re: and no subject
6. Certain types of attachments

Images
Spammers will use images as “Web beacons.” They will contain bits of code that will secretly send a message back to the sender that they have reached a real email address. As a receiver, you should set your email program to not allow automatic downloading of pictures and you shouldn’t download pictures from an unknown source.

Do not reply to spam
unless you’re certain that the message comes from a reliable source. This includes not responding to such messages that offer an option to “Remove me from your list.” You may be notifying a spammer that he has reached a real email address.

Attachments
Sending any type of attachment may cause some email filters to reject your email or discard your attachment. In particular, don’t send .exe and .bmp files as they can have viruses included in them. Attaching an Access database file is almost always rejected as is any other program files. These should always be zipped first and then sent.

Doug Williams, Internet Marketing Consultant

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 6:33 am and is filed under Business Web Hosting, Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.