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Online Business Reputation and SPAM

Businesses often send unsolicited emails and messages in the hope of catching the recipient’s attention. But they seldom realize the potential damage this can cause if the messages get spammed. A survey conducted by an internet agency found that over 60% of people delete messages without reading them if the sender is unknown and almost a quarter even click on the ‘report email as spam’ button provided the service provider. This is done even for subscribed emails.

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Businesses often send unsolicited emails and messages in the hope of catching the recipient’s attention. But they seldom realize the potential damage this can cause if the messages get spammed. A survey conducted by an internet agency found that over 60% of people delete messages without reading them if the sender is unknown and almost a quarter even click on the ‘report email as spam’ button provided the service provider. This is done even for subscribed emails.

Such disturbing statistics provide clues about recipient behavior and their unwillingness to receive just any type of messages. The reasons why messages reach spam folders are not difficult to seek and businesses do not realize the risk they take by misusing channels of communication to solicit customers.

If the mail server of a business gets marked as the starting point for spam emails, all the emails sent through it would get blocked. Nothing can be more damaging for any business reputation. Therefore it is important to know what makes messages get spammed.

  • Irrelevant content– Though many people subscribe to mailing lists, they often use the ‘report email as spam’ button to stop getting them. A survey conducted to get spam statistics revealed that over 70% feel this is the best way to unsubscribe. The reason for this is to stop getting such mails since the content is no longer relevant, or does not meet their expectations.
  • Unsubscribe request not heeded– When a recipient does unsubscribe to a mail, he wants to stop receiving any more mails. When his request goes unheeded and the messages keep coming, he is annoyed enough to use the spam button.
  • Email clients– Using mail clients like Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook is risky since these connect users through the ISP. Others may then use this ISP to send spam messages through others accounts. This makes genuine mails also get spammed in the process since the specific IP address gets blacklisted.
  • Sending a large number of emails to the same domain– ever so often, a business uses email clients to send hundreds of emails to subscribers, most of which may be Google, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts. A single IP address sending 200-300 mails to Hotmail accounts within a span of a couple of minutes, may be perceived as spam by its servers, and blocked.
  • Not providing an unsubscribe option or link– For as long as needed, users may subscribe to a newsletter, and after some time may not need it any more or do not find it interesting enough. However, they cannot find a way to unsubscribe and therefore click on the spam button, just to stop them from flooding their inbox.
  • Rental mailing lists– Sometimes large mailing lists are available for a price. However, these lists will have at least a quarter of invalid addresses and also some spam traps, which are bound to lead to poor delivery rates and spamming of mails.
  • Email harvesting without subscriptions– Sometimes it seems to be a smart idea to get addresses from directories and using them to send an email first, but without providing a subscribe option. Following this with another series of mails without removing recipients is bound to end up as spam.
  • Ignoring complaints– customers and recipients like to be heard and their inputs taken seriously, and ignoring them will positively lead to mails ending up in spam folders.

The number of emails reaching inboxes is on the rise and many are unsolicited. Most recipients do not have time to clear their inboxes. The best way to catch their attention is to avoid all of the above steps.

HubSpot