Authentic Emails landing in the spam folder has been Achilles’ heel for online store owners for long. Online stores hire magento developer online to enhance the security features of their website. The spam mail contradicts the security claims of the website leaving the customers frightened. In the long run, this results in the loss of customers. The situation becomes awkward when the transactional Emails end up in the spam folder. Let us try to understand the working of the spam filter and the ways to avoid the authentic Emails being marked as spam.
Working of the Spam Filter
All the major Email service providers have pre-defined criteria for identifying spam mails. These criteria are checked by the associated spam filter and accordingly, mails are forwarded either to the inbox or to the spam folder. All the incoming emails are checked on the parameters fed to the spam filter. The average score for an email to be marked as spam should be more than 6.6. This score aptly called “the spam score”, is calculated by averaging each filter parameter’s score. The email scoring less than the benchmark score of 6.6 is diverted to the inbox. So, websites adopt various strategies to minimize the spam score to avoid their emails being marked as spam.
Steps to Avoid Spam Emails in Online Stores
There are things that should be done to make certain the genuine emails landing in inbox. The foremost thing should be an appropriate server configuration. The DNS records should also be complete in all aspects. The headers and the MIME portion of emails should be included in the email and most importantly, before dispatching the email, it should be tested. Let go through these steps in detail.
Step #1: Configure Server and IP Address
The Configure domain SPF is a text record available in DNS that contains the list of hosts and IP addresses authorized to send mails from within the domain. The receiving server scrutinizes the IP address from where the mail was sent through this record only. The domain keys viz. a public key, a private key and a unique signature attached to each outgoing mail add another layer of security from spammers. The verification of the sender takes place with the help of the public key in the DNS record. This ensures that the email was encrypted or signed with the private key of a particular server.
The Reverse DNS stores the IP address of the domain server and the hostname to inform about the origin of mail. The MX Record highlights the mail server in charge of handling the incoming email messages used to deliver failure delivery notifications. A new IP address should not be used immediately as it might already be in use by someone else. Hanging around for around 4 weeks might clear the conflict and the blacklisting of IP address can be avoided. The usage of the SMTP server for transmitting emails in Magento is a first-rate solution for spam menace. However, Magento doesn’t support SMTP. So, either business hire magento developer or use an extension for including SMTP in their scheme of things. The backup of the server is essential as a failsafe in this case. Once the configuration of the server is taken care of, one can proceed to the next phase.
Step #2: Proper Email Structure
The Email should contain the plain text without fail as the HTML messages fetch high spam scores compared to plain text. The images should be entrenched into emails directly instead of placing hyperlinks of the same. The quote printable line length should range between 78 and 998 characters as per the RFC 2822 specifications. Use simple HTML (avoiding CSS) for the body structure of the email to avoid being labeled as spam.
Step #3: Relevant Email Content
Make sure that the email contains engaging and relevant content for the readers. The URL shorteners should be evaded as it increases the chances of being marked as spam. Try to avoid single images within the mail as it might perplex the spam filter and the email can be misunderstood for spam. The use of HTML code is a better option. With each image, it is better to include at least 2-3 lines of relevant text.
Step #4: Test Emails before Sending
Testing the emails before dispatching them is a good option to avoid goof ups. Businesses often use external services to check on the spam score of the email. The email should also be checked for proper display in different devices, browsers, as well as mail service providers by these external agencies. Another way to get genuine feedback is to send the email to your team members for improving the spam score and appearance of the mail. The e-mail should also be checkered for view on smartphones or mobile platforms.
Concluding Remarks
Businesses can evade the spam menace if they hire magento developer online or by following the above-mentioned steps on their own. After having a thorough understanding of the respective spam filters and its scoring pattern, one can manipulate the spam filters to land into the inbox of customers instead of the Junk folder. It is always better to use a dedicated server instead of a shared one for hosting your website as even one spam account on a shared server can mar your chances of landing in the inbox to get the attention of the customers. Businesses lacking technical expertise should hire magento developer for guiding them about these kinds of technicalities.