Spam paranoia
Today I received the second email in a month from a blogger who said that my message had gone into his spam folder. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he had made a point of checking it now and again, it would never have reached him.
I send out a pretty large volume of email for bloggasm. I’m constantly corresponding with other bloggers and interview subjects — whether I’m doing research for an article or networking.
I’m always incredibly paranoid that some sentence or link or phrase in my email is going to trigger the automated spam police and whisk my message away, never to be seen again. When my paranoia is at its worst I think about switching email accounts or opening multiple accounts with other companies and sending test emails to see if they get through filters.
A number of emailed interview requests are never returned. I often wonder if the person isn’t responding because he didn’t see the email, or is he just not interested in being interviewed?
This is a negative effect I don’t think many people consider when they talk about the pain that spam causes. There are probably thousands — if not millions — of legitimate emails that never get through every day.
at my last job i would make it a point to log in daily to the webhost’s e-mail client to scan through the spambox. invariably there would be a message from a potential client which had been caught, or worse yet, a message from a current client with info or concerns pertinent to a project in house that were needed.
i would have to whitelist e-mail addresses on both the webhost client and the desktop client in an attempt to alleviate the likelihood of missed mail.
Yeah, it’s scary, isn’t it?