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For some reason my e-mails from my gmail.com account are being filtered as junk by a ton of services. I am having a hard time contacting any of the companies I do business with because my e-mails are being sent to their junk and they never see them. Any idea why this could be?

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5 Answers

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Couple things.

1 - Your email could've been flagged as spam by other gmail users thus flagging gmails spam filter to take your email and place it in spam. 2 - As mentioned above you could have a string of letters that gmail detects as possible junk. They do update their list/words relating to spam frequently.

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Well I can't imagine it is a string of letters since it is just my name (james). Is there a way to check if my e-mail has been flagged? – James Simpson Sep 4 '09 at 15:54
I personally do not have a email address to where you can check with Gmail if your accound has been flagged as a spammers account however these links might help you out.. If you are sending emails in bulk check this link.mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81126 Help forum for Gmail users. google.com/support/forum/p/gmail?hl=en – MyHat Sep 4 '09 at 16:52
Does Gmail really filter spam based on other people's flags? Can you provide a reference for this? – endolith Jul 25 '10 at 22:47
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up vote 1 down vote

I had a similar problem when I started my company many years ago and using a hotmail account (taught me a lesson!)

I am surprised that places are still doing this. Gmail should be using SPF and all the other techniques that will come up as "not spam" to the mail servers of the companies you are dealing with.

It is possible that they are either ignoring you (sorry!) or just have a policy to block email from free accounts.

If you don't mind me saying - and please ignore if you think I am interfering. If you are starting a business, register a .com or other domain. They can cost peanuts and if you find the right host, you can get mail included. It will make you look much more professional than using a free account and you should not have these problems. In my business, it felt like the turning point from amateur to (well slightly more) professional.

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I have domains (had a coorporation for several years now), I just tend to use my personal gmail account for stuff like ad networks since that is what I've been using and its easiest as I check it frequently. Maybe I should start using my other addresses instead from now on though. – James Simpson Sep 4 '09 at 0:35
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Is it possible that your email address contains a string of letters which might be seen as junk? I dunno, a person called Eva Dean might have evadean@gmail.com?

Maybe a silly idea.

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If you're sending emails out to lots of people at once, this could be one source of the problem. And if that's the case, an alternative to using your personal mail account to contact your customers could be MailChimp, which is now free for lists of up to 500 subscribers.

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You should use google apps for sending business email. As for the frequent checking, just enable pop access in your google app accounts and retrieve them in your personal account. Alternatively, you can forward google app account mails to current account.

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