Spam Filters - Why are they Harmful for Marketers and How to Avoid Them

Have you seen this text often in websites these days?

'I ABSOLUTELY HATE SPAM and I will NEVER rent or sell your personal information to anyone anytime. Period'

Why do marketers use this text block at the end of opt-in form? Simple. They are afraid that their subscribers might be come forgetful and might accuse them of spamming, even though they are legitimate email marketers.

How does it affect you?

Spam is one of the most irritating words these days, especially for email marketers. It not only affects those who are at the receiving end but also those who SEND emails. To combat irritating junk spam filters of different Internet Service Providers (ISP) are outdoing each other in evolving out new ways to filter junk email. While this is good in weeding out real junk, even the legitimate email marketers are affected by it, because spam filters sometimes filter out legitimate emails as spam. So what happens is that if you have a large list and a lot of your emails are filtered out chances are that only 1% of your subscribers are reading your message.

The great 'spam' triggers!

While there are many words that will trigger spam filters(e.g., sexual phrases, money making opportunity), here are the most common "trigger" words that you may be using in your ezine:

*e-zine
*amazing
*cancel at any time
*check or money order
*click here
*congratulations
*dear friend
*e-mail marketing
*for only ($)
*for free
*great offer
*guarantee
*increase sales
*order now
*promise you
*risk free
*special promotion
*this is not spam
*to be removed
*unsubscribe
*winner

How to BEAT 'em

There are two ways to beat the spam filters. One is the hardest way to avoid all these "trigger" words, which I know is quite impossible.For example, when you are recommending a product to your prospects you might be tempted to use a "trigger" word like 'great offer" or "amazing" product, both of which can trigger spam filters.

I tell you of an easier way to avoid spam filters. Your second choice is to disguise these words and phrases in clever ways by inserting keyboard symbols within them and/or replacing a letter in them with a symbol. The trick is not to make it too cryptic - you want your readers to be able to understand what you're saying. For example, in my e-zine, I use "fr*ee" for free.

Some spam filters might penalize you for doing this in order to decrease your spam points, I can tell you that the points this tactic costs you penalize you much less than using the words and phrases themselves.

It's always a good idea to test out your e-zine before you send it out. The good news is that you can do it for free. Before I send out any article or e-zine to my prospects, I make sure I use Lyris's free Content Checker at http://www.lyris.com/resources/contentchecker/ to check if my e-zine will get filtered out or not. The content checker works based on the criteria on which Spam Assassin filters out email messages. It tells that your message scores a certain number of points. If the number of points is low, then it's good. If it's too high, it's time for some revision, because a high Spam Assassin point of 5 or more means that your message is doomed to be filtered out even before it reaches your subscribers.

The report will tell you exactly which words are costing you points.

Usually you should only be concerned if your score is over 5 points.If so, you can either delete those words or disguise them, as I mentioned above. Now suppose that you have checked out your message through the content checker but have found that your message has a lot of "trigger" words. Use a free tool that I recommend. All you need is just enter your article and not only does the tool format your article but also insert "special characters" within the 'spam trigger words" so that your e-zine doesn't get filtered.

I test and check each and every issue of my e-zine with this free content checker and formatter tool before I send out my e-zines. No wonder subscribers get to read most of my articles and promos that I send out. That's why I'm a happy publisher.

Sidenote: Regardless of whatever tools you use, it's still pretty important to request your subscribers to whitelist your email address or domain name. If your subscribers care about your emails, they should have no problem doing this small thing. It will ensure that even if sometimes you feel compelled to use those "trigger words" in your e-zine, your e-zine will still reach your subscriber's inbox.

About the Author:
Arindam Chakraborty is an expert article writer and Internet marketer.Learn more about his email marketing tips and tactics by visiting: http://arinrecommends.com/
Article Submitted On: September 17, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Are opt-in email lists still valuable in this SPAM age?

One of the things that the introduction of blogs has done is to cause an exodus of sorts from email newsletters or ezines to online publishers simply publishing the information on their blogs.

It is not too difficult to realize why online publishers embraced blogs so quickly and enthusiastically. Actually the SPAM monster appeared to be slowly squeezing the life out of their online business. To meet the SPAM challenge most ISPs have set up SPAM filters that are so powerful that they quite often filter out mail that has been requested, especially mail of the massive opt-in kind. This has meant an increasing number of bounces and undeliverable mail.

With the arrival of blogs there was an easy way out of all this anxiety. Ezines could easily be posted on blogs and no ISP SPAM filter would touch it. And what is more the email aspect of feedback was not lost because readers could easily post a comment at the blog. The huge advantage over email here was that one could see another readers comment and quickly support or disagree with it. Blogs have actually revolutionized publishing the way no other tool has in the history of mankind.

So have blogs made email newsletters and opt-in email lists obsolete? The answer is a firm “NO”. Nothing would be further from the truth. Even when an online publisher delivers their weekly or daily content at a blog, what is the best way of sustaining and growing traffic to the blog?

Actually even with a website, there is no other more effective way of sustaining high traffic than by harvesting email addresses. This is done by offering and email newsletter or an email course of sorts. This builds up a valuable opt-in email list that you can use again and again to direct traffic to your site. You can even sell them something. As internet marketing experts often point out, the money is in the list.

This is the reason why experts advice affiliates to set up their own sites or blogs to play a key role in their efforts to market their affiliate site. This is simply because it is a huge waste to drive so much traffic to your affiliate site and end up having only a tiny fraction signing up for your affiliate program. By driving traffic through your own site, you have an opportunity to harvest emails and build up a huge, valuable targeted opt-in email list that you can still market the very same affiliate program to, later. In fact research has clearly shown that most people buy only after several repeated encounters of the same product or service.

Even with the introduction of the extremely useful blogging tool and the change of business models by many online publishers, opt-in email lists still remain the most valuable online marketing tool.

About the author:
Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for Website Source, Inc. http://www.websitesource.com. Her established writing skills coupled with experience in the website hosting industry have provided internet professionals with marketing, product and service ideas for many years.
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Email Anti Spam And Virus Protection For Businesses - There Is Hope

With anti spam vendors offering low cost licensing, businesses can now afford advanced email spam and virus protection with a simple to use interface at a much lower cost. The great thing about technology is that as it evolves it gets faster, additional features and economical. Over the past few years the same evolution has taken place with anti spam technology and services. In large part this can be attributed to the open source software community plus enterprising companies enhancing the capabilities of this software and packaging it into easy to use anti spam appliances.

It is not practical to have anti spam software running on desktops in a networked business environment. Managing all employee junk email software at the desktop is not realistic. It can be a nightmare and costly in terms time and licensing.

Spam appliances sit in front of your email server so that when email comes in it will first go to the spam appliance and the email will be scanned for spam as well as viruses. The filter will block the message if it identified as know spam. If the filter is not sure if the email is genuine it will quarantine and hold the email at the filter and it will be stored until the recipient deletes it, releases it to their email box, or they can white list a trusted correspondent so that future emails will not be held back. This will greatly reduce the load on your email server and reduce your bandwidth needs. We have seen anti spam systems block up to 83% of incoming messages. This could help extend the life of your email server and push back the need for upgraded capacity.

Most virus outbreaks occur via email and for little cost an appliance can block viruses before they reach your network and user’s inboxes. This provides an extra layer of defense in addition to your current anti virus solution.

Businesses have two options if they use an appliance based solution for their spam and virus control. They can purchase and administer their own filter. This is a good option if you have a large number of employee mailboxes to protect and the technical staff to administer the spam appliance. Businesses also have the option to outsource their spam control as a hosted service. This is a good choice for smaller companies and if information technology is not your specialty.

If you purchase your own spam filter, a subscription to updates may also be required. Make sure you get upfront pricing for the add-ons that you will need. If you have more than 100 email users and the technical staff to maintain the spam appliance, buying your own filter may be your best option. Generally the basic model will work for most organizations. Large organizations with thousands of users will require a spam filter appliance with increases capacity and features. Spam appliances are designed to work with all mail systems but some do have specific enhancements for Exchange server Microsoft’s popular collaboration software and mail servers that support LDAP (light weight directory access protocol). Spam appliances use the LDAP protocol to verify recipients before delivering messages to your email server, this avoids consuming server resources.

If your business has five to one hundred employees, then an outsourced anti spam and virus filter service is going to be a good economical choice for your organization. Fees are based on the number of users and you only pay for what you use. You will not have hardware to buy, maintain, and upgrade. The upfront cost is minimal and most email filtering providers will let you try the service for free at first. Another added benefit to outsourcing your spam control is redundancy. It is important that you choose a provider that has their spam and virus filters collocated at secure internet data center facilities. Data centers provide redundant network connections and power, so if your email server or internet connection is down unexpectedly the spam appliance will hold your email until your email server becomes available, minus spam and viruses.

Anti spam technology is constantly improving and the costs are getting lower. With increased productivity and an added layer of defense against virus attacks, an anti spam appliance or service is something your business can not afford to be without.

About the Author:
John Tourloukis is the founder of Fast PC Networks an internet consulting company and anti spam and virus filter service firm.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com