Email is the number one B2B communication and it comes with a price. Regardless of the email system you use, spam email will follow you. It is very frustrating and time consuming to get rid of it. No one is exempt from spam email. As soon as your email address shows up on the Internet, you can count on getting spam email.
Many international organizations are using various means of email spam reduction. Sadly, while legislation is being passed all over the world, such as the Canadian Anti-Spam Law that went into effect on July 1, 2014, it won’t necessarily reduce your spam email since the spammers ignore such legislation anyway. The primary purpose of the true spammers are to get as many valid email addresses as they can so they can sell their lists to whomever wants to buy them. In most cases, they are using much more sophisticated equipment than you have for your business to create these lists.
The daily amount of span email that is sent around the world greatly varies depending on the source. By very rough estimates, there are 130 billion spam emails sent on a daily basis, representing 70% of the total email sent. That also represents a $13 billion annual loss to businesses based on purchased software used to reduce spam and the man-hours it takes to weed through the spam to identify valid business email. It is said that the U.S. is the top spam email sender with an approximate 20% world-wide share while India is the top spammer for Asia.
In this day and age, small business owners have to react quickly to their customers to avoid losing them to their competition. That means there is little time to slowly review each email to see if it is valid or not. Business owenrs simply do not have time to do that and run their business as well.
There are somethings that you can do to possibly help reduce the amount of spam both coming into your mailbox and leaving it.
Limit Your Replies to Emails
If you want to reply to an email that has attachments and/or links in the email you received, try to avoid replying more than 2 times to the same email. Say for instance there are 3 links embedded in the email you received. If you reply 3 times, you have just sent out an email with 9 identical links included. Many spam filters will identify email with more than 3 links, (and sometimes less), as spam. Result, you might just get automatically marked as a “spammer” and put on one of the many email blacklists. So, take the time to create a new email to the person you are going to continue responding to. It will take much less time than trying to get off a spam blacklist and having incoming/outgoing emails bounce.
Don’t Answer Email Located in Your Junk Box
If you get an email that lands in your junk/spam mailbox, move the email to your Inbox first before you reply. Outlook remembers what email is junk and/or spam as does your antivirus program. If you send out a junk email by replying to it, you could be blacklisted automatically.
Do Not Answer Junk or Spam Email
To repeat, spammers send out millions of emails daily and their sole purpose is to identify valid email addresses. If you respond, you have just validated your email and will get many more spam emails.
Do Not “Unsubscribe” From a Spam Email
Same reason as not answering spam emails. As much as it would be nice to answer with a few choice words as to why you are “unsubscribing”, keep the blood pressure and spam emails down. Do not send an email separately requesting you be unsubscribed from their list as that will also validate your valid email.
Just Say NO to Changing Emails
Lately, through Outlook, emails are arriving that ask you, “The email content has changed. Do you want to save it?” Absolutely click No and delete that email immediately. You have a good chance that email has a bug attached.
It is really a shame that you have to go through these steps and it would be great if there were no spam. There are marketers out there that try very hard to stay within the guidelines and the true spammers only make it harder for them. In some cases, by following these tips, you will likely lose a valid email or two. However, if it is a valid email, the sender will either email you again or call you.