In recent months, spam has evolved from an annoyance to a deluge which threatens the usefulness of email as a communication medium. The volume of spam is growing twice as fast as useful email. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are engaged in a guerilla war with spammers, resorting to increasingly aggressive tactics to protect their email systems. People sending email for legitimate purposes often are caught in the middle. Organizations using email must be aware of these issues and take action to ensure email gets delivered.

No Perfect Solutions

Identifying spam is not a black and white matter. No filter is perfect. Anti-spam techniques try to strike a balance, filtering as much spam as possible while rarely discarding email the recipient would want. Inevitably, some email sent by any organization will be incorrectly blocked. The goal for an organization should be ensuring delivery of the vast majority of its email.  Success requires understanding today’s landscape for email -- and specifically for spam combined with following a number of best practices.

Keeping to the Point

The high cost of direct mail effectively limits the volume that organizations send.  With email costing so much less, organizations must control how much they send to constituents. Over-emailing can sour people on an organization, increase spam complaints, and drive up opt-out rates. An organization must coordinate mass emailings across departments and ensure the content is relevant to recipients. Segment email recipient lists by topic and make it easy for constituents to select which mailings they receive.

Content Filters

Spam tends to be focused on a few "hot" topics -- current favorites are mortgages, medications, and always pornography. Content filtering uses keywords and phrases characteristic of common spam themes. Modern content filters use advanced scoring algorithms, so rarely does a single, common word mistakenly trigger them. However, it is important to avoid use of more specific terms likely to be found in spam.

Spammers trying to defeat content filters use uppercase letters, numbers and punctuation in subject lines to form misspelled variants of keywords which would trigger filters, for example, the name of a certain gentlemen's medication. Modern filters look for this trick, so avoid excess punctuation or capitalization.

Be careful not to trigger “filtering” by recipients themselves. Use concise, informative and literal “Subject” lines; don't sensationalize, pun, or employ generic statements like "Your help needed." The “From” address should include a display name clearly identifying the organization so the email stands out, e.g., "The Helpful Society <info@helpful.org>"

Acquiring Addresses

The most qualified additions to an organization's house file are people who have expressed an interest by signing up for email, donating, advocating or participating in other activities. When collecting email addresses, clearly inform people that the organization is collecting their data and explain how it will be used. Give people a chance to opt out -- provide a checkbox saying, "I'd like to receive future mailings" which they can uncheck.

When using rented or purchased lists -- where you will be communicating with new contacts --  make sure the first email asks for an opt-in. Do not just add them to a file and start emailing -- that is spamming. When using multiple list sources with potential overlaps, de-duplicate addresses.

List Hygiene

Always honor unsubscribe requests -- never send email without a clear, convenient way for people to opt-out of future mailings. Update your house file immediately, even if that means some manual processing. Discard stale addresses, especially by automatically processing bounces (delivery failure notices). Bounced email consumes resources, and ISPs do not appreciate repeated emails to addresses already identified as bad. Spammers rarely bother with bounce processing, so ISPs use high bounce rates as a spam indicator.

Delivery Relationships

Spammers and spam fighters are engaged in an evolutionary “arms” race when new filtering techniques become available, spammers find ways to fool them, but spammers cannot hide the quantity of email they produce. ISPs have adopted a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to sources that deliver email in volume. Since nonprofits typically email “home" rather than “work” addresses, half of a group’s typical house file will consist of addresses at major consumer providers such as AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail. Organizations must ensure that whoever hosts their email service has "white list" relationships -- exemptions from volume filters -- with these ISPs so their email does not get blocked.

Conclusion

Spam is producing increased scrutiny of email.  Organizations sending legitimate email must distinguish themselves from those who abuse email. The key principles for successful use of mass email are ones that come naturally to the nonprofit sector -- act ethically and responsibly, and respect people's wishes.

Successfully managing mass email communications to maximize delivery is increasingly complex, and organizations must leverage external expertise. They should outsource mass email to a vendor who has what it takes: the software and infrastructure to implement effective technical measures as well as the human resources to maintain third-party relationships and stay abreast of new anti-spam measures.

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