In my last blog post, I spoke about ‘mostly dead’ email recipients who are closely monitored as an anti-spam measure because their accounts are being neglected. Not only do ISPs investigate these accounts, but Microsoft just announced they’re suing an emailer for deceptively creating accounts with the intent to game their anti-spam filter. Clearly this is not something that legitimate senders would do, but it does relate to a question I get on occasion; should we tell our recipients, friends, family and co-workers to help us get out of the spam folder by clicking the ‘not spam’ button?

The short answer to the question is yes, this can be helpful. But the reality is it will only work if:

1. You’re not trying to get around a genuine reputation problem.
2. You’re really popular.
3. The response activity is genuine.

Companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! spend millions of dollars and labor resources fighting search engine click fraud. The fraud scenario is no different with email when users click ‘not spam’ using dormant or otherwise fake accounts. As a result, be mindful that these and other email providers can tell the difference between genuine user responses and an attempt to game their system, as Microsoft is showing with their latest lawsuit.

Here are some recommendations to engage recipients to legitimately help regain inbox standing:

1. Corporate employees should sign up for their emails using their (active) personal webmail or other email accounts. Besides the obvious fact that it’s helpful for everyone in the business to support the email channel, in the event there is a spam folder delivery, there’s nothing wrong with those users helping with the ‘not spam’ effort. One tip is to recommend employees respond to these emails from home as opposed to work so that the webmail host does not think the company is trying to game their system.
2. Send a dedicated address book request, or even ‘not spam’ request to users. While most marketers use a small font notice in the header or footer requesting to be added to the address book, a dedicated email or strong reminder in the body copy will better drive adoption. These address book users will get ‘saved’ from their email going to the spam folder and some ISPs will take notice. In the event that a spam folder problem lingers, then there’s also little harm in requesting in the header, body copy, or even subject line that users at that domain click the ‘not spam’ button.
3. Another more aggressive scenario is to consider requesting through Facebook or other social networks to get certain domain users to click ‘not spam.’ Never underestimate the power of social media, and a valiant plea for spam folder salvation could go a long way to helping fix a problem.

Again, these recommendations  have to be in scenarios where other reputation issues such as poor email acquisition practices are not the true cause of the problem since any effort to engage ‘not spam’ responses would be short-lived if reputation problems persist. Legit marketers can only employ these practices on occasion, so use them wisely!

Tags: deliverability, email tips, flag, not spam, not spam button, reputation, spam button, tips

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