For many, using email is a primarily positive experience. It’s an open and warranted exchange of legitimate information that performs both professional and personal purposes. That being said, there are plenty of dangerous demons lurking across the internet and potentially into your inbox. It’s important to remain especially informed and vigilant of one email threat to your next campaign: phishing.
What is phishing? The official definition is as follows:
Phishing: Phishing refers to the process where a targeted individual is contacted by email or telephone by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure the individual into providing sensitive information such as banking information, credit card details, and passwords. The personal information is then used to access the individuals account and can result in identity theft and financial loss.
How does this affect your campaign? Email service providers such as Yahoo!, GMail and Hotmail all immediately filter out messages that appear problematic. Of course you aren’t sending these malicious messages, but it might appear that way to hyper-vigilant ISPs.
Your message is more likely to be trashed if you send an HTML version of your message to subscribers and have click-tracking turned on. While many use this feature to see how successful your links are within the email, it can accidentally set off alarm bells in systems that detect suspicious content.
If you enter a URL address and make it clickable in your message, your subscribers will see the address you enter. But when they first click on the link, they are first sent to an address that resembles “clicks.companyname.com” so that your service tracks the click – this mismatch is often detected by software looking for phony emails.
Preventing this from happening is simple. If you’re interested in tracking the links in your emails, use hypertext link instead of a URL address. For example:
WHAT NOT TO DO
Get the software here: www.thisdoesntwork.com
WHAT TO DO
Get the software here.
Avoid the trash can and make a few minor adjustments to your email. You’ll be a step closer to successful delivery!
Let ResponseGenius help take your email marketing to the next level – hello@responsegenius.com
