Is your email Spam?

If you’ve ever sent an email to a company and never got back a reply. It’s possible that your email was flagged as junk.

There are some simple things you can do to make sure that your email gets into the inbox and not the Spam box.

An auto reply does not guarantee that your email made it into the inbox of someone who will read your mail.

An inquiry or even request for help or information. If you don’t receive a reply send it again and consider what you write in the subject line.

Do include one or more of the following

· Name of product you are inquiring about. This will always register with the company as they do a quick eyeball of the emails caught by the Spam filters. it’s an ego thing.

· Capitalisation of the company name. It tells us a human wrote it.

· Keep it short 6 words max. I’ve never seen anyone do it yet it would catch my eye with tag words.

Don’t just use single words Spammers have abused them to the point of I no longer double check

· Hi. Pointless and now winds up in Spam and I for one won’t even check if it is a real email.

· Question, common Spam word and all emails sent to business are questions so it’s redundant

· Info. redundant again

· Newsletter. Company Spam filters will often delete these. If your client gave a business account for correspondence don’t get them in trouble for it. Let them know you’ve updated the web site with a reminder that says

· Name of person we know our name only spammers put our names in the subject line.

Some other things that can see your email hit the Spam filter.

· abusive language. If you want your message read offensive language is not the way to go. It winds up in Spam and the matter cannot be resolved.

· Too many links Spam filters become suspicious of too many links in an email. I’ve pulled out some well intentioned emails providing numerous links hit the Spam box. The best way around that is provide one link and suggest which pages to follow.

· Sending it to multiple recipients. These will usually get flagged as Spam and create a double problem in a business. Sometimes more than one person can handle your request and delays will occur when the recipients have to check with each other who is handling it. It’s much better to send it to one person. If it’s not their job they will pass it on. If you don’t hear back send another email asking if it was received. If you still don’t hear anything then try another account. The person you sent it too may be out of the office and for unexpected reasons haven’t had the chance to turn on the vacation message.

Remember the employees are human and we all make mistakes. We will gladly fix them when we can just don’t be surprised that if you abuse the reader they turn off from wanting to help you. So if you want a problem fixed please use the language that will keep it open. Being human we get sick, we have family members that get rushed to hospital. Cars break down and we have bad days too.

One other suggestion. If you encounter a problem on a website explain a bit of what happened when you did what. Often businesses tech support need to try to replicate the problem and the message, ’your site isn’t working, fix it!’ doesn’t help.

Tell us what operating system you were using, what browser and version if you know it. And if you get an error message copy and paste that to the email.

And for me

It looks like the Learning Strategies emails are finally sorted at my end. There was a bit of problems with the change-over of email server at Learning Strategies and it feels like a few emails went missing.

One problem was with the forwarding program wiping out the senders email so I had no way or replying. They now come to me directly so I can reply and hopefully we don’t have any emails going missing.

The Learning Strategies auto-responder should be working. It will let you know that the email made it to Learning Strategies that doesn’t guarantee it will be seen as it can still be filtered as junk.

I’m getting an average of 1000 Spam email a day and let’s face it there is only so many offers for enhance the male male ego that anyone wants to see so I leave it with the Spam filters. Other than a quick eyeball to see if it’s a real email.