How to Get Your E-mails Delivered

Spam is creating a huge problem for legitimate nonprofits who want to communicate with their supporters. Here are a few ways to reduce the problem of spam filters and blockers. Many email systems now employ complicated algorithms to detect spam messages and either block them or file them in a mailbox the recipient will never open.

Message and subject content: There are a host of words or phrases that will indicate a message as “spam” and it’s best to eliminate these from your email. I know, you think that “Viagra” is one of them, but others are more subtle. “Forward this to everyone” is a phrase that will trigger some spam filters. Check the list in our article “Don’t Let Your E-mails Get Filtered Out -- A Guide to Avoid Spam Filters.” (http://www.npadvisors.com/NewContent/100252.asp) 
Also test your email copy to several email accounts that use the latest versions of different common email systems, like AOL, Yahoo!, Outlook and Netscape. Make sure they end up in the ‘inbox’ and not the ‘junk mail’ box in each of them.

Spam blockers: Many users are employing systems that hold all incoming mail in a ‘purgatory’ folder, and send an automated email back to the sender. This email asks for a reply, generally requesting the sender to copy a unique code that appears in the autoreply to ‘validate’ the sender. If you send 20,000 emails, you may get 500 to 1000 of these individual auto-replies back to the ‘from’ address of your email. Replying to each of these is a tedious task. One idea is to use a unique email address from which you send subscription confirmations, like subscribe@yourorg.org. If you have 100 new e-mail subscribers each day, a portion of these will generate spam-blocker messages to which a human in your organization can respond.

One way to avoid spam blocking is to ask for your supporters’ help ahead of time. Since many of your new email names come to you online, as a result of donations, newsletter signups, or petition signatures, on the ‘thank you’ page of each of these transactions you might suggest how these new supporters can ensure that they receive your mail. Here are some suggestions that World Wildlife Fund uses:

AOL 9.0

1. Click the "Add Address" button to the right of this message.
2. A new window will open, click the "Save" button at the bottom of this page.

Outlook 2003
Right-click this message and add us to your "safe senders list".

Yahoo/ Hotmail/ Other Email Providers
Add ecomments@wwfus.org to your address book.

You might also consider setting up an entry in your FAQ page to answer the question: “Why am I not getting emails from you?” and suggest that they check their settings.

For these reasons, it’s also a good idea to use a consistent “from” address in all of your communications.

March 2004

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