Spam. Just the mention of it makes us cringe. Although there are some who deliberately engage in unethical email marketing, most of us, I'm happy to say, do not. Instead, we prefer to market to those who want the content we send them. This is where autoresponders come in.
If you either have your own online business or have considered starting one, then no doubt will have some knowledge of autoresponders. They are the cute little programs that enable us to send out email messages automatically, depending upon the action of someone who wants to download some information that we offer, or who simply wants to stay in touch.
But, spammers are managing to penetrate even the most effective email filters. More of it is getting through, and those companies that offer an autoresponder service have begun to notice that what should be bona fide email campaigns are often nothing less than spam campaigns. At the risk of upsetting the powers-that-be, they have started introducing anti-spam software of their own to help customers to avoid sending spammy messages of their own.
And therein lies the problem.
Perfectly bona fide messages are being given high spam scores. This is known as a false positive. A false positive is a term that comes from the world of statistics, and it simply means that something that isn't is being classified as if it is. False negatives are just the opposite. They refer to instances when something is, but has been flagged as being something else.
In any case, false positives are plaguing the attempts of autoresponders to minimize the spam its customers send out.
I had this experience the other day, and this prompted me to contact the company that I use.
That company assured me that the high spam score was nothing more than a warning for me, and that my message would be sent out regardless. It was simply intended to tell me that the message could be interpreted as spam by the email software of others - the people on the receiving end of my message.
But, that wasn't the full story.
It turns out that it's not the message at all; instead, it's the home domain that gets blacklisted. I used the "contact us" link on the web page of the third-party who created the software to point out that Ezines itself should not be on their blacklist. Then I contacted the folks at the article directory to tell them of this.
Bottom line: If you message is flagged by your autoresponder, then call them and tell them how unhappy you are. Maybe if enough of us do it, they'll stop being overcautious.
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