In fact, I often run into some of those same hoops — email verification, grey listing requests, over-zealous content filters gobbling up my perfectly legitimate email to a customer or from a customer to me. The entire obstacle course that has been constructed between email sender and receiver is enough to drive some people around the bend. It certainly has made this permission-based, opt-in email sender think that perhaps we have over-regulated the email industry to the detriment of the industry.

In many respects, the measures created to reduce email spam from finding its way into our inbox have become more disruptive than the spam that those same measures (and resulting industries) were created to control — and also quite counterproductive (in terms of time, money and energy spent on maintaining those same anti-spam systems.)

Did you know that 80 percent of all spam sent in North America and Europe originates from the same 100 spam gangs, comprised of between 200-300 individuals? In fact, the identity of these spam gangs and the people in them are known and kept in the Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database, which is maintained by Spamhaus (there is a link in my blog post at the end).

Heck, with the money it costs to run and maintain the current anti-spam industry, we could pay these spam gangs twice as much money as they are making now to JUST DO NOTHING (or even better, to work on improving HTML design compatibility across email clients or something else that might be beneficial to email in some way.)

The products, services, processes and technologies created to decrease spam are actually more disruptive to the communication between legitimate senders and their customers than they are to those high volume spammers, who will send out billions of emails out each day until their conversion goals are met.

By the way, do you know the average conversion rate of a high-level spammer?

0.00001 percent. Yep. 1 conversion in ever 12,500,000 spam emails! And they still make millions!

So, the more difficult that the antispam industry makes it for spam to arrive at the inbox, the more spam these gangs will send, jamming mail servers and networks around the world until their revenue goals are met.

Unfortunately, for legitimate senders who work with smaller email lists of customers or subscribers, the deliverability issues caused by the antispam industry cost them quickly and dearly. They don’t have the time, money, resources or desire to send billions of emails each day until their goal are met. They have actual businesses to run and reputations to protect.

Recently, I was involved in a discussion on Google Plus about an increase in spam on Twitter and other social media sites. I cautioned that we should be very specific about defining our concerns about spam in the social media space, and that we should strive to develop strategies and solutions which can be implemented with surgical precision lest we be prepared to sacrifice a lot of good for some bad, like we have with email.

Years ago, I poked a funny stick (even though, for many, it really isn’t very funny at all) at permission email to illustrate my fear that email communication was becoming over-regulated and over-controlled.

In an earlier post on this same blog, I shared some interesting statistics about spam, a list of the top spammers and top spamming countries and the how much spam is sent before one sale is made!

Please share your thoughts. I think it is the responsibility of our industry to have an honest discussion about it.

Can a more creative (and effective) approach to email spam be created?

What might that look like?

There is a lot info out there, but it would take several years of your life to implement all the ideas. So, I’ve put together four simple tips, that won’t cost you a penny and more importantly, should only take a couple of minutes to organise.

1. Content

Send quality content and ensure your messages don’t look too “spammy”. Avoid the overuse of CAPITALS and words like Free, Special offer and of course Viagra etc.

2. HTML v Text Emails

If sending html emails try and use html & images sparingly. Also, why not send a text version of your email as well [more].

Note: In tests we performed on our own GroupMail newsletter here, sending html & text at the same time gave us the highest deliverability rate (Compared to just sending text only or html only emails).

3. Email Attachments

Lots of anti-virus software/filters will strip out attachments from your email. If you need to send attachments, it’d be better to link to the attachment on a website.

4. Whitelisting

Another good idea is to ask your recipient to whitelist your email address when they’re signing up to your newsletter – you could include something along the lines of “To ensure delivery of our newsletter to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add yourname@youraddress.com to your address book, contact list (Gmail) or Safe Senders List.”

Thats it, free, quick & easy to set-up (wish everything was that simple) – so off you go and implement before you send your next email newsletter.

Next: I’ll talk about blacklists, ISP’s and email accreditation (Warning! this content will be boring (but important ).

Rob
GroupMail Team