Why is my cold email going to the spam folder?

Because that’s what the spam folder is for unsolicited email.

Sending cold email, particularly in bulk (and let’s be honest, if it weren’t sent in bulk, no one would know or care about it going to spam) is spamming. This is exactly the kind of mail that the bulk folder is designed to catch. Senders that don’t have permission have no path out of the bulk folder except trying to get some permission for their email.

Recently I’ve had an uptick in request for help getting cold emails out of the bulk folder. Some have found me through search engines and this blog. Others have been referred by someone. Whatever the reason, they come to me with a purchased list that isn’t being delivered to the inbox and they want me to help them.

The problem is I can’t help them. They are sending unsolicited email and their mail is being delivered exactly where it should be – in the bulk folder. In the past I’d try to help. I’d pull out my bag of tools and walk them through the steps to fix their delivery. But it often wouldn’t work. They weren’t looking for the kind of help I provide. They were looking for one quick trick to fool the filters into putting the mail in the inbox.

These engagements were frustrating for me, too. I know exactly why their mail isn’t going to the inbox, they’re sending spam. But no company wants to hear they’re spamming. I’d try and explain, using terms like unengaged recipients and unwanted email. I’d offer suggestions on how to create that engagement, how to find their audience, how to be better marketers. That wasn’t what they wanted, they wanted a quick fix that would let them invest pennies into purchased lists that dropped right into the inbox.

It’s not the techniques that are the problem. I regularly use the same techniques with clients who have data containing a mix of opt-in and non-opt-in data. These clients have been collecting data and email addresses through many different channels over many years without an audit trail. We can sort the list out, retain the good data and get rid of the old data.

The problem is that purchased lists are unwanted by recipients and the filters applied to their mail. That doesn’t mean opt-in lists never have delivery issues, they do. And we can fix those delivery issues because, fundamentally, the recipients want that mail. The recipients asked for that mail. There is no such assurance that recipients want mail if the list has been purchased.

Are some purchased lists opt-in? Yeah, probably. But the purchaser has no way of knowing what the address owner originally opted in to receive. All the purchaser has is the assurance of the seller. The seller who makes money even if the list isn’t opt-in.

Why does cold email go to the bulk folder? Because ‘cold email’ is just the most recent euphemism for spam. And the bulk folder is where spam is supposed to be delivered.

Related Posts

Want some history?

I was doing some research today for an article I’m working on. The research led me to a San Francisco Law Review article from 2001 written by David E. Sorkin. Technical and Legal Approaches to Unsolicited Electronic Mail (.pdf link). The text itself is a little outdated, although not as much as I expected. There’s quite a good discussion of various ways to control spam, most of which are still true and even relevant.

From a historical perspective, the footnotes are the real meat of the document. Professor Sorkin discusses many different cases that together establish the rights of ISPs to filter mail, some of which I wasn’t aware of. He also includes links to then-current news articles about filtering and spam. He also mentions different websites and articles written by colleagues and friends from ‘back in the day’ discussing spam on a more theoretical level.
CNET articles on spam and filtering was heavily referenced by Professor Sorkin. One describes the first Yahoo spam folder. Some things never change, such as Yahoo representatives refusing to discuss how their system works. There were other articles discussing Hotmail deploying the MAPS RBL (now a part of Trend Micro) and then adding additional filters into the mix a few weeks later.
We were all a little naive back then. We thought the volumes of email and spam were out of control. One article investigated the effectiveness of filters at Yahoo and Hotmail, and quoted a user who said the filters were working well.

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4 things spammers do legitimate marketers don't

I’ve never met a spammer that claims to be a spammer. Most that I’ve met claim to be legitimate marketers (or high volume email deployers). But there are things spammers do that I never expect to see a legitimate marketer doing.
I’ve written about these things throughout the blog (tag: TWSD), but it’s probably time to actually pull them together into a single post.

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Permission and B2B spam

Two of the very first posts I wrote on the blog were about permission (part 1, part 2). Re-reading those posts is interesting. Experience has taught me that recipients are much more forgiving of implicit opt-in than that post implies.
The chance in recipient expectations doesn’t mean, however, that permission isn’t important or required. In fact, The Verge reported on a chatbot that will waste the time of spammers. Users who are fed up with spam can forward their message to Re:Scam and bots will answer the mail.
I cannot tell you how tempted I am to forward all those “Hey, just give me 10 minutes of your time…” emails I get from B2B spammers. I know, those are actually bots, but there is lovely symmetry in bots bothering one another and leaving us humans out of it.

Speaking of those annoying emails, I tweeted about one (with horrible English…) last week. I tagged the company in question and they asked for an example. After I sent it, they did nothing, and I continued to get mail. Because of course I did.
These types of messages are exactly why permission is so critical for controlling spam. Way more companies can buy my email address and add me to their spam automation software than I can opt-out of in any reasonable time frame. My inbox, particularly my business inbox, is where I do business. It’s where I talk with clients, potential clients, customers and, yes, even vendors. But every unsolicited email wastes my time.
It’s not even that the mail is simply unwanted. I get mail I don’t want regularly. Collecting white papers for my library, RSVPing to events, joining webinars all result in me getting added to companies’ mailing lists. That’s fair, I gave them an email address I’ll unsubscribe.
The B2B companies who buy my address are different. They’re spamming and they understand that. The vendors who sell the automation filters tell their customers how to avoid spam filters. Spammers are told to use different domains for the unsolicited mail and their opt-in mail to avoid blocking. The software plugs into Google and G Suite account because very few companies will block Google IPs.
I’ve had many of these companies attempt to pay me to fix their delivery problems. But, in this case there’s nothing to fix. Yes, your mail is being blocked. No, I can’t help. There is nothing I can say to a filtering company or ISP or company to make them list that block. The mail is unwanted and it’s unsolicited.
The way to get mail unblocked is to demonstrate the mail is wanted. If you can’t do that, well, the filters are working as intended.
 

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