Being I’ve posted recently about how your e-mail can be blocked if you do spammy things. Outside of following my recommendations, a bunch of folks have e-mailed me privately that they still are experiencing their e-mails being blocked. That means they are most likely still doing something spammy.
Over the past year, I’ve experienced even my plain text, no graphics or attachment e-mails getting blocked by the other side because I inadvertently did something spammy.
In my case, it was usually the original e-mail I was responding to was spammy (way formatted, had an embedded graphic, etc.) contained within that took my reply right with it — blocked!
The fact remains that e-mail is not a brochure nor was it ever meant to be a fancily fonted graphically enhanced message. Although the temptation is there because the tools to do so are available in your e-mail program, if you are serious about your e-mail getting through, you need to be a “plain Jane” so to speak.
Why would formatting, embedding and such tools exist if they are now causing so many legitimate e-mails from getting through the network? Well, the answer is simple. Back in the day who would have thought that commercialism would so corrupt this communication tool is such a way as to necessitate the need to start blocking spammers. Heck, the word spam used to mean luncheon meat!
When it comes to business, it is best you type your e-mail properly from head to toe while being concise and clear about your message without having to rely on any formatting, caps or embedded graphics. And for personal reasons if you really want to get your e-mails through, plain text is also the way to go. Forget about all those buttons in your e-mail program!
I’ve typed about this topic before here on my Blog, but many ignore my advice because they still want their photo, their logo or that fancy colored font to be seen in their business e-mails. Fine… then know you risk your e-mail getting blocked. You simply can’t have it both ways.
If you do get an e-mail returned due to “policy reasons” you know the system on the other side picked up on something spammy within your e-mail. You can check to see what that may be by using this free tool online that checks the content of your e-mail called ContentChecker.
And for those who didn’t catch my article on the topic yet, give it a read now and ensure your e-mails get through to their intended parties: How To Avoid Looking Spammy.
HTH! ;-)
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Hi Judith
I found your site helpful and was hoping you could give me some advice on how to fix an embarrassing situation.
My general email account got hacked and all (all 700) of my contacts got sent spam. This includes people who I’ve not been in touch with for years, but kept the email “just in case” and also work contacts. I feel awful about this.
Should I send another email to everyone in my address book to apologise or does this count as more spam? Should I advise everyone to block my email and get in touch if they want my new email address? Or should I just pretend it didnt happen and sanitise my contacts for the future to only include those I actually use?
I feel that I should act quickly to prevent it happening again. I am very tempted to simply close that account. I have already changed the password.
Your advice would be appreciated, I do try to be polite and am mortified that my account got used in this way.
Hey, Marianne:
It would not be additional spam to send a heartfelt apology. You can use that as an opportunity to provide your new e-mail address and let folks know that you will be shutting down the current account.
I don’t believe the hacking was your fault — I would be more concerned with the provider and finding out how it happened so that you can make sure it doesn’t happen again. Hacking does happen though — all we can do is our best to avoid it happening again. If your provider cannot explain this to your satisfaction I would close the account and consider moving to a more secure provider.
You have a good idea to only keep those addresses available for those you communicate with on a regular basis. You could always keep the full list off-line in another file in case the need arises. However, e-mail is all about the conversation and relationships — rare is the occasion (such as this one unfortunately) — where you would be e-mailing those you no longer have a relationship with.
So, go ahead — send a humble and sincere apology, note your new address and do what you can to ensure this doesn’t happen again. HTH! ;-)