Dealing with Spam

In the war against spam, there is occasionally collateral damage in that the spam solution may frustrate your users, slow the delivery of e-mail, and make a real dent in your already overtaxed IT budget. This can happen because things don't quite work the way you expect, users don't behave the way you expect, and the enemy doesn't even cooperate and just go away.

Users don't check their quarantines

Putting spam e-mail in a quarantine folder, where users can inspect at their leisure and retrieve any good mail that accidentally wound up there, all sounds good in theory. But if you have a good spam filter, you will have a very low number of false positives (good mail marked as spam), which means that 98 percent of what winds up in quarantine is trash that nobody wants to read in the first place. With those kinds of odds, many users don't ever look at their quarantine until there's a problem, and by then, they may have forgotten even how to do it.

If your spam filter uses a rating system, see if you can sort the spam by its score, and just wholesale delete all the stuff with really high scores. If someone sent you important mail that received a really high score, there's a good chance you didn't want to read it anyway. Most of the false positives will have just barely scored high enough to get classified as spam, so it's pretty easy to separate those legitimate messages from the crowd if your filter supports that. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next Page In addition, make sure to read these articles: For E-Mail Marketing, What's the Best Day? E-Mail Marketing Basics for Small Businesses Developing E-Mail Marketing Lists Free Instant-Messaging Software Top 10 E-Mail Marketing Mistakes What are the Components of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign? More Related Topics: Industries:  Software Services & Applications (301)  ,  Email Marketing  ,  Internet Social Networking  ,  Direct Marketing  ,  Software Services & Applications  ,  Electronic Mail  ,  Marketing & Advertising Channels  ,  Technology T T T Print Email  Digg It  del.icio.us Related Resources Latest Posts Social Networking or Online Community? While I'm on the subject of social networking, Denis Pombriant at Beagle Research Group, a CRM consultancy, offers a thoughtful view on the topic. He ... Read More Email Marketing Tips How to get your email marketing messages opened is the constant challenge of the Internet Marketer. Over the last few weeks there have been a ... Read More Book Short:  More on Email Marketing Book Short:  More on Email Marketing My friend Bill Nussey's The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing is a good read for those in the ... Read More Podcasts How to Raise Capital, Pitch to Investors, and Use the Power of Partnerships Betsy Flanagan of Startup Studio interviews David Samuel, founder of Spinner Networks, which was acquired by AOL for $320 million, and Grouper, which was sold ... How to Listen to Market Demand and Create a $100 Million Company Betsy Flanagan of Startup Studio interviews Matt Shobe, cofounder of FeedBurner, the leading provider of media distribution services for blogs, RSS feeds, and podcasts. Meebo Founder Seth Sternberg: Entrepreneurism and Raising Venture Capital Betsy Flanagan of Startup Studio interviews Seth Sternberg, a cofounder of Meebo, a Web-based platform that enables instant messaging from any computer. Forms and Agreements E-Mail Policy Web Site Development Agreement Checklist of Issues for Web Site Development Contracts Internet Advertising Agreement All Forms How to Create a Successful Blog Betsy Flanagan of Startup Studio interviews venture capitalist David Hornik of August Capital and the creator of VentureBlog. Business Resources Vendor Quotes Business Directory Office Products Free Business Magazines Franchise Opportunities Sponsored Links Site Map | Contact Us | FAQs | About Us | Media Kit | Reprints | RSS Directory | Sign Up for Free Newsletters | Disclosure Policy Copyright © 1999 - 2008 AllBusiness.com, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this content or the data or information included therein may be reproduced, republished or redistributed without the prior written consent of AllBusiness.com. Use of this site is governed by our Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy, Terms of Use Agreement and Privacy Policy. © Dealing with Spam True. Used by arrangement with Wiley & Sons, Inc. Get In-Depth Company Information from Hoover's | Buy a D&B Credit Report | What is in Your Company's D&B Credit Report? | Article Archives Online Business Database | Online Business Information | Email Marketing Lists | Sales and Marketing Solutions | Business Mailing Lists Information and opinions on AllBusiness.com solely represent the thoughts and opinions of the authors and are not endorsed by, or reflect the beliefs of, AllBusiness.com, its parent company D&B, and its affiliates.