Pay Attention to Whitelists

With all the spam and junk mail making its way into our inboxes, ISPs and software companies have come up with lists of criteria, formats and addresses commonly used by spammers that are automatically blocked.

Your “whitelist” is the list of e-mail contacts you want to receive e-mail from. Your whitelist can also be known as your approved senders list. Many times your whitelist is in the background that gets added to when you simply add folks to your address book. By adding addresses to your whitelist, approved senders list or address book, you are clearing the way for those addresses to not get blocked if they inadvertently trip spam filtering.

From a business POV, you need to ask site visitors to add you to their whitelist when they contact you through you site, preferrably giving them the specific address you will be contacting them by, or you risk your answer to their request not getting through.

On the flip-side, when you sign up for a mailing list, newsletter or contact a site you may want to form a partnership with, you also need to add their e-mail address to your whitelist, approved senders or address book. Because if you don’t take this proactive action, you risk not receiving the response you are seeking.

Just so happen to have an article on the subject for your reading pleasure: E-mail Whitelist Etiquette. Enjoy!