But, wait, I'm not a spammer

You might think of spam as being that junk mail trying to get you to buy something or worry about some credit card, but as TechSoup blog points out, it's easy to have your nonprofit's email newsletter or other correspondence to be similarly construed as spam by an email filter. Your organization can follow some newsletter guidelines to avoid being labeled as spam.

If you have an email newsletter, how have you addressed this problem to avoid being mistaken as spam? What steps have you found to be effective?

-Megan

I enjoyed Willow's article.

I send out a monthly newsletter and I think the biggest ways to be avoid being seen as spam are mentioned.

Beyond those, the biggest factor is consistency. I send it the same time every month, with the same format on subject line and 'from' email address.

Also, I think it may help to put the word [Newsletter] and [organization] into the subject line. I've experimented with several different types of subject lines and get as good an open rate for a real 'plain jane' subject line that identifies the email as a newsletter from my organization as for more complicated ones.

I expect that any format of subject line that is consistent, and not easily confused with other mailings you do, will work. I'm in the process of testing another format for subject lines now, and will be interested to see the outcome.

To go off on a slight tangent, I think the whole issue of subject lines is interesting. What works, what doesn't work. I have never read a how-to-write subject lines article that hasn't been contradicted in another how-to-write-subject line article. 'Do always use questions.' vs. 'No, never use questions. That's a sure-fire way to be taken as spam.' 'Do use the person's name.' vs. 'No, the single best way to be seen as spam is to use the person's name.'

Thanks!

From some one who scans the junk email folder for about 75 email accounts, I agree that subject line and sender address is very important.

I can have 1000 to 3000 messages in the junk folder at any time and I sort them by subject. It becomes quite easy to then spot bulk spam with the same subject line and different senders.

Also make sure the subject line is over one word long and is grammatically correct for standard English (if the demographic is the US). Don't use extended char sets in the subject line.

What catches my eye in these subject lines is the use of the recipients display name or real name (instead of the email user name) this is a clue that there is relationship with the sender rather than a bulk send from harvested email addresses.

The tags [Newsletter] would also catch the eye until the spammers start using it.

When the sending address is the org's domain name it is easier to recognize in the list of sender address than an obscure email house. Also the sender user name that makes sense (newsletter@ or jane.doe@ as opposed to ajdkfahro@...).

If any of those catch my eye I'll check the message body and forward or discard depending on content. If the subject line or sender does not catch my eye the recipient never gets the message.

Dave

I think Willow's article brings up an important issue that I've tried to impress on my users. That concerns the implications of marking a legitimate message as spam for any reason.

If you use a spam filter like MailShell that reports back to its servers on messages that you mark as spam in order to improve its future performance, then marking a message you know is not really spam as such is an anti-social act. It could lead to the MailShell filter blocking other subscribers from getting their legitimate mail, which is something you wouldn't want to happen to your own organization's mail, is it?

You could argue that an organization that doesn't make it easy to unsubscribe deserves such blacklisting, but I always try to live by the principle of "assume innocence." It's entirely possible that an otherwise fantastic organization might flub this due to lack of technical resources.

If you can't get an org to unsubscribe you, or you're just get too busy to deal with some legitimate newsletter, don't make them suffer, just use your E-mail program's filtering capablity to automatically move the messages to their own folder, or even the trash.

In Outlook, filtering is configured under Tools/Rules Wizard. In Outlook Express it's under Tools/Message Rules. In Thunderbird it's under Tools/Message Filters. It's not that hard, and it can be quite satisfying! If it's beyond your capability, ask your favorite tech guru.

Richard