Illustrate the Steps Before Sending Mail

After all the precautions and safety measures still most of the business owners suffer the heat of spam. They usually wonder why this happens after all the initiatives. Forget about big business owners, the small business owners are more affected by the term “Spam”.

So, why this is happening? It’s better to understand how these spam filters work and how they detect your mail as they are getting into spam folders instead of inbox. Even the software that the business uses they also find difficult to send the email to the inbox.

Every Email Service Provider (ESP) provider including Constant Contact, iContact and AWeber all face the challenge of getting their users’ messages to the inbox. While the ESP maintains the bulk of the responsibility in getting messages there, content of the emails are crucial to consistently have the message hit the inbox, not the spam folder.

Illustrated below, I explain the levels of spam filtering that take place with each message.

1. ISP Filter:

The first step is to check the major sources of spam and reject offending messages. This would be around 75% work for anti-spam operations. This includes checking for Email Relays, IP reputation, Authentication (Phishing), botnets and simply accepts or denies a sender from proceeding to send their email. When mail is rejected here, a bounce is sent to the sender for later handling.

2. Content Filter:

The next step is to filter the content. This handles about 20% of anti spam operations. The practice is done to check that doesn’t meet their standards, such as malicious attachments, spammy words and even the finger print of the email itself. When mail is rejected here, it’s silent and often the user doesn’t know. Some ISPs may bounce the message back with details, but not always.

3. Personal Filter:

Finally, the Personal Filter is the filter that happens when the recipient’s email software filters the messages on its criteria. These handle about 5% of anti-spam operations. Depending on the email service, the ISP may offer this through a web-based interface or in the case of Outlook, it’s running with the email client. These filters honor any request by the recipient. When mail is rejected here, it’s silent and often the user doesn’t know until they specifically look for the message.

These were the steps that spam filter carries for its process. one thing you can do is asking your recipients to add you in their address book so that next time when you send message it goes to their inbox. by this you can interact with your recipients quiet often and that also avoiding the spam.