Why Spam Filters for Email are an Email Sender’s Friend

Many email senders rage against the machine – the spam filtering machine, that is, and specifically spam filters for email. And it’s easy to understand why: legitimate email getting caught and misidentified as spam, also known as false positives, can play all sorts of havoc for an email sender. But consider this: what would the email world look like if the email receivers (ISPs and inbox providers) didn’t use spam filters?

Picture if you will what your own inbox would look like if there were no spam filters, if your ISP let the tidal wave of spam flow to your inbox, or if your own computer’s spam filtering capabilities didn’t exist. Not a pretty picture, is it? In case you really have no idea of how much spam is being sent in a day, consider this: in 2019 VentureBeat reported that with the addition of a new spam filtering tool, Gmail was blocking 100million more spams a day than before the addition of the tool. Think about that.

A World Without Spam Filters for Email

Now, imagine a world without spam filters in which the email that you send is trying to distinguish itself in that flood of email, trying to stand out in the middle of all that spam. How would you do it?

You couldn’t. Because by the best estimates, 80% to 90% of all email is spam. ISPs receive a Saganesque (as in billions and billions) amount of spam each and every day.

In a world without spam filters, your email would never get read, because nobody would be able to find it, nobody would ever see it.

If it weren’t for spam filters, your email would never stand a chance, it would be choked out, and never noticed at all. It would be like looking for a needle in a 20-story tall haystack.

So, instead of looking at spam filters as the enemy of legitimate email, look at them as your friend. Learn how to work with them, not against them. Learn how to make sure that your email doesn’t look spammy, so that it doesn’t accidentally get tagged as spam. After all, if the spam filters weren’t blocking so much email, your own legitimate email would be adrift in a sea of spam, and probably never opened at all. For tips on how to avoid spam filters for legitimate, requested email see our article How to Avoid Spam Filters: Do People Mistake Your Email for Spam?