Are You Sick of Spam Filters Causing Good Mail to be Lost?

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Article Title: Are You Sick of Spam Filters Causing Good Mail to be Lost?
Author: VectorCentral.com
Contact the Author: http://www.vectorcentral.com/contact-editor.html
Word Count: 783 words

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"Are You Sick of Spam Filters Causing Good Mail to be Lost?"
Author: ©Vector Central & the Interactive Marketing Ezine

The innocent are constantly being inconvenienced because of all the senselessness of those who have caused the need for spam filters. The filters exist-- they will remain-- to deal with them is a 'must' in online business emailing.

**How Do They Work:

Spam filters use a point/score system that assigns points to words/phrases that trigger the filters. Positive points refer to spam words. Negative points refer to non-spam words.

When your e-mail accumulates a certain number of points, it is classified as spam. Different words give different level of points. It is not equality of points when it comes to spam words. For example, you might use the spam word "Free" 3 times in an email. If you are under a certain score level, then your email will land in the Inbox. If you have other spam words in your email, thus added to the 3 'free' words will lead toward landing in the spam/junk folders of your subscribers.

Another factor to consider, which adds to the difficulty is that there are many different types of spam filters and they vary from server to server. They are always changing -- you never get a breather from testing your emails.

Many of our customers want to know our techniques of getting our html solo ads into the inboxes, instead of the spam folders. I will share some of them with you.


**Ways To Prevent Filters From Blocking Your Mail:

--First- Very Essential: Notify your subscribers and customers to add your email address to their email account's AddressBook and Safe/Contact List. Add your information to your website subscriber page, to the follow up page, and to the welcome email. Chris Lang of Email Delivery Jedi spent an enormous time writing instructions for whitelisting. I have organized his work (with his permission) to fit our subscribers' needs and you can do the same. See our instructions page - click here.

--Second - The best way to prevent your emails from being blocked is to "change" the words/phrases into non-spam words. Yes, that is very time consuming, but worth it to get your emails and your customers' ads into the subscribers' inboxes.

--Third - Alter words to avoid being blocked.
WARNING: The filters recognize these techniques and if you use too many of them, your mail will be penalized for using alterations. Recently filter parameters have cracked down on alterations, so I fully recommend the First process of changing words/phrases to non-spam ones.

A commonly used term for accepting email addresses is: 'Whitelisting.' The reason I no longer use the term is because a customer accused me of being racial when he read it on our website. It is a universal term and has "no" meaning of any kind of that nature, but I do not want to offend anyone so I prefer to use AddressBook/SafeContacts - Accept Us - etc.


**How To Test Your Emails For Trigger Words:

Test Runs:
This is the best strategy. After writing your message/ad, send it to test sites that you have opened at various web-based email services. I suggest: Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast.
-- Do not change the options to your preferences. Keep the filters "On" at these test email accounts.
-- Do 'Not' add your address to your addressbook / safecontacts. In other words, don't accept yourself.
-- Send your email to your test sites. If your email lands in spam/junk folders in even one of them then you have work to do.

Email Providers: Every email provider is different and thus you need to test in multiple accounts. What lands in Yahoo inboxes, doesn't always land in Gmail inboxes, etc. And in hotmail, if certain options have not been set after opening an account, 'everything' goes to the spam/junk folder.

Spam Filter Checkers:
-- If you use a spam-filter checker program, or you have software, they are both good but not always up-to-date with the current filter changes. I have seen some of my test runs get through spam-checkers, yet when I send to my test sites the email lands in the spam/junk folders.

Working toward avoiding trigger words is definitely time consuming, but very worth it to Deliver Your Mail to Inboxes!

All the Best to you!
Vector Central

About the Author:
Vector Central and the "Interactive Marketing Ezine" provide essential marketing methods to generate your online success. Free weekly ad with subscription: http://www.vectorcentral.com/subscribe.html
As a Solo Ad Design specialist, Vector Central will assist you with your Exclusive ad campaign:
http://www.vectorcentral.com/adv-solo-ads.html