How can I prevent being listed as a spammer?
Most "false positives" (legitimate messages accidentally identified as spam) occur from bulk mailing list type mailings, and not from an actual personalized email message. Is your company sending bulk emails or newsletters?
There are two main reasons why you may be marked as a spammer:
1. The recipient doesn't remember signing up, and reports your messages as spam.
Sometimes, while using an online service, purchasing goods online, or filling out a form to enter a contest, the sender is not aware or has forgotten they have subscribed to a mailing list. When the recipient starts receiving mailing list messages, they may not remember explicitly subscribing and therefore report the emails as spam.
Sometimes a company will change names and, although the recipient was happy to receive the mailings before, doesn't recognize that the continued mailings are from the same company, thereby reporting the messages as spam.
2. The sender is using a mailing list service that has been blacklisted.
Most mailing list type services offer a link tracking service, which replaces your domain name in the message with that of the tracking domain. This allows you to track who clicked on your links, but it also masks your domain name and forces you to include a third party domain name in your email message. Since most mailing list type services have problems with spammers signing up to use their service, this link tracking URL will probably have appeared in some spam and could be blacklisted. You could end up getting your messages blocked by including this third party domain name in your email messages.
If too much spam is seen coming from the mailing list service's mail servers, the IP addresses of those mail servers could be added to blacklists of known spammers. If your recipients are subscribed to these blacklists, all email from the blacklisted servers could be identified as spam, regardless of content. "Too much" spam from these mail servers could, for example, could be triggered by just one out of 1,000 recipients forgetting that they subscribed to a mailing list.
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Things a mailing list service can do to prevent from being listed as a spammer:
1. Ensure that there is a web site at these link tracking URLs that indicates what mailing service owns it.
2. Ensure that your senders include a statement that says why the recipient is receiving the message (where and when they subscribed).
3. Include a link where the recipient can unsubscribe as well as report it as abuse to the mailing service's abuse department (roving.com is now doing this as well as several others).
4. Make sure that the subject of the mailing list message is not misleading, and indicates subscription. For example, "blah blah Newsletter for September" as opposed to "Check out this great deal!"
5. Don't allow your users to import email lists, and maintain records of confirmed opt in requests.
Following these five things will allow our analysts to recognize that this message that has been reported as spam may actually be the result of a legitimate subscription. Additionally, it will allow us to quickly recognize a link tracking URL as belonging to a mailing list service (with good policies), and not the actual spammer's URL.
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Things companies or mailing list owners can do to prevent from being listed as a spammer:
1. Do only confirmed opt-in, and keep all records of IP addresses and dates of the confirmation process, to both prevent and dispute spam complaints.
2. Ensure that you include a statement that says why the recipient is receiving the message (where and when they subscribed).
3. Include a link where the recipient can unsubscribe by clicking on it.
4. Make sure that the subject of the mailing list message is not misleading, and indicates subscription. For example, "blah blah Newsletter for September" as opposed to "Check out this great deal!"
5. Ask your recipients to whitelist your newsletter at the time that they subscribe.
Following these five things will allow our analysts to recognize that this message that has been reported as spam may actually be the result of a legitimate subscription.
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CAN-SPAM Compliance
Even if your messages are CAN-SPAM compliant, they can still be considered Unsolicited Bulk Email, which is the term we use to define spam. Even if a recipient has sent you queries or is a current customer, it is highly recommend that you include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of any sales follow-up or advertisement related messages. It is also good to remind them of how you got their information.
Unsubscribe links that the recipient simply has to click on are less likely to result in a spam complaint. Unsubscribe links are also less likely to get you listed as a spammer by our analysts. On the other hand, if you require your users to send in a postcard or send an email to unsubscribe, the decision as to whether or not you are a spammer is more likely to go against you. This is particularly true if you state that the recipient must send an email from the email address that is subscribed, but you don't state the email address you sent to. These are all considered part of "good subscription policies".