How Can My Mailing List Be Mistaken For Spam?

If you run a mailing list, e-zine, or other email newsletter that sends out numerous similar or identical messages, you may risk being accused of sending spam. If you are accused of spamming, your ISP may cancel your account, you may lose the hosting of your website, and your servers may be placed on blacklists or on the "deny" lists of other servers.

If your emails are being sent to people who did not sign up to receive them, or to people who may have signed up and forgotten, you may begin receiving spam complaints. If these complaints make it to your ISP, some of the consequences mentioned above may result. If unwilling receivers of your email report it to an internet blacklist such as MAPS, you may have your site or server blacklisted by thousands of other internet servers.

If you add people to your list without their consent, you will often be labelled as a spammer. Spam doesn't necessarily have to be for bogus products and services. Your legitimate email newsletter may be considered spam simply because it was unsolicited.

If your emails are all identical, with no personalized information whatsoever, these may be considered spam aswell. Since spam is mass-emailed to tens of thousands of individuals, its content is usually completely general. If your correspondance contains no personalized or unique information, or appears to be "canned" it may be mistaken for spam.

If you send emails to people on your mailing list that contain topics or information that are irrelevant to the original description of your mailing list, you may be considered a spammer. People who signed up for your list did so in order to receive pertinent information, if you wish to send them email on unrelated topics, you should ask their permission first. Also, if you send correspondence to people at a more frequent rate than you had specified when they signed up, this may be considered spamming as well.