PDF Spam On the Rise

Recently, the amount of spam hitting inboxes has stayed relatively steady, but according to Symantec (an internet security firm based out of Cupertino, CA), the tactics used by spammers is changing.

Spammers are shifting from image-embedded emails to PDF-attached emails, duping many – especially those checking their email through business-related accounts. PDF spam now makes up two to eight percent of all spam.

The nuisance of spam will never go away. It’s incorporating of other file types besides PDFs too, such as zip files and Excel files, which will only increase the amount of confusion on what emails, are “safe” to open for the general public.

The only surefire way to stop spam dead in its tracks is for users to hotly embrace the use of whitelists and address books.

Read more here.

Address Book Instructions For Your New Recipients

When a user signs up for your mailing list, they should be advised to add your email address to their contact list or ‘white list’. But you can’t just assume they know the ins and outs of their email client - especially their understanding on how to add contacts to their address book. So if you want to play it safe and cover all of your bases, give them a tutorial (screenshots and all) for every email client. It’s usually a two to three step process that’ll only take the user less than a minute to complete.

Little things like this will benefit all parties involved. It will increase the email marketer’s deliverability rate, your client’s ROI and the recipient’s overall experience and impression of the company / email campaign.