So I’m an avid user of Netflix. I usually go through about 6 DVDs every two weeks or so. Their email notifications are exceptional in their on-time delivery and are always accurate to the order of my queue. These message always land in my Yahoo! inbox without fail.
This past week, they’ve seemingly had some issues on their side as notifications were not released upon the return of a specific DVD and with which DVD you should expect to receive next. There’s a message on their main page explaining the issue and they also emailed their entire database about the issue. But unlike their notification emails, this announcement landed in my spam folder. Now I have a theory as to why this happened: They sent one mass email to their entire database at once explaining the issue, thus making email clients think it was a spam message due to the large amount of recipients it was going to.
But from this debacle, it dawned on me that if a spammy message lands in your inbox, you usually mark it as spam and it consequently effects the IP address negatively. But what if you mark it as “not spam”? Don’t you think it should inversely effect the IP in a positive manner?
After discussing this with a few co-workers, some interesting points were made. With this scenario, there’s a strong possibility that spammers would just have to create multiple accounts across all major platforms to counteract the legit spam reports, thus increasing the deliverable spam email. But what if major email clients could track the “not-spam” marks on a person by person basis? I’m not sure how likely that is, but if someone figures it out, it’s definitely something I’ll support…
Being involved with email, deliverability is one of my biggest challenges. It’s a constant struggle to combat spam filters. But if something like this is initiated, it would definitely help my cause and make my job a lot easier.
Does anyone know if something like this is feasible? Do you think it’s a good idea? Bad idea? Neutral? Comment below!
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Posted by MindComet on Aug. 14, 2008
My favorite daily editorial email, VERY SHORT LIST, has a new layout and design. It’s more intelligently laid out, now with a pre-header and with more predominant calls to action, especially with the forward to a friend button. They’re also incorporating social networking tools such as Digg and Facebook to spread the word about VSL.
The email filtering tech is also based on an algorithm that teaches the computer how to pick good mail. It’s called Bayesian filtering and it basically looks for similarities in good emails as signs…
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Posted by Patrick on 08/14/2008 05:36 PM