Dealing with spam can feel like being in a cabin full of mosquitoes and love letters. You want to read every word of those messages, but the constant battle against the bugs makes you wonder if you shouldn’t just throw everything outside, good and bad.
That level of irritation, caused by constant interruption, is very common. And it can be especially detrimental in corporate settings, where productivity can be significantly lowered because of the continual fight against spam. Some estimates note that business users receive almost 100 non-essential emails every day. That’s a lot of mosquitoes.
But you can take control without having to block the relevant messages. Here are some strategies for reducing spam while still letting your important mail get through:
Use sender address verification
Blocking spam and allowing the right content to sail into your email is much easier with sender address verification, a strategy that helps to keep unwanted bulk email out of your inbox. Whenever an email is sent to you, the sender receives a verification message that lets them quickly verify identity and legitimacy. Best of all, they only have to do this step once, since all future emails from the sender are automatically delivered to your inbox without a verification step.
Even if the sender chooses not to go through verification, you can still see the message in an email queue, which acts as a type of virtual holding pen. You manually scroll through and approve that the message is legit, and then it’s sent to your inbox. This system lets you take charge of your email at a whole new level, where you no longer have to slog through junk mail and real correspondence and spend hours separating them from each other.
Sender address verification also helps to cut down false positives, which happen when legitimate messages get trapped in spam filters because they tripped certain rules within a spam program.
Create a separate account for bulk mail
Some bulk mail is pure spam, sent from people trying to get your attention for financial gain or otherwise. But other bulk mail serves a real purpose, such as industry newsletters, press releases from competitors, and marketing messages that are relevant to your business. These senders wouldn’t be appropriate for sender address verification, yet you want to avoid the zombies trying to lumber their way into your inbox.
For these messages, consider creating a separate email account so you can sign up for whatever you like without flooding your everyday email inbox. Be sure that account has sender address verification set up for it too, however, so you don’t miss any personal messages from business contacts that might come through.
Give your email address sparingly
Unless you’re in a profession where you’re constantly handing out your email address and cultivating more sales leads, it’s best to hand over your address when it’s truly needed. As part of a bigger productivity strategy, consider telling friends or acquaintances to use a personal email address for you, and don’t give out your business email for newsletters you know you won’t read, or websites that are designed to collect email addresses in exchange for whitepaper downloads and other content.
Steps like these can help when you want to reduce spam without blocking important messages, and it does require a proactive approach. But once you have your systems and technologies in place, your spam management will be completely stress free.
To experience top-tier email security for your organization, request a demo of Sendio today.
