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How to Bypass Spam Filters
Table of Contents
Introduction:........................................................................................................3
What is Spam? ....................................................................................................3
How to Bypass Spam Filters .............................................................................5
Common Mistakes ..............................................................................................7
How Spam Filters Work......................................................................................8
Testing Your Email Campaign...........................................................................8
Preventing False Abuse Reports.....................................................................10
Reasons for False Abuse Reports...................................................................10
Ways to Prevent False Abuse Reports............................................................11
Email Firewalls..................................................................................................13
Introduction
As a marketer, you want to make sure your email campaigns reach as many
legitimate consumers as possible. However, spam filters can make it difficult
even when sending legitimate mail to potential clients. If you are one of those
email marketers who send out permission-based emails, you will inevitably run
into the problem of overly aggressive ISP’s preventing your emails from reaching
the inbox. Spam filtering affects innocent email marketers everyday, inhibiting
communications efforts and threatening email campaigns.
The best way to avoid spam filters is to understand what causes filtering and to
determine the standards mailbox providers use to trigger it. Even if you are
sending legitimate email newsletters, you will experience the ramifications of
spam filtering. Understanding how the spam world functions and the reasons that
so many emails are lost in cyber space, is essential to guarantee the success of
your email campaigns.
What is Spam?
Spam is the online equivalent to unwanted door-to-door solicitation. Spammers
send out unsolicited emails, which contain the same message to a large number
of recipients. Most spam is created for commercial advertising purposes to sell
suspicious products or services. The sender can flood the Internet with several
versions of the same message—with little cost to them. Most of the costs are
incurred by recipients and email providers.
There are two main types of spam, Usenet Spam and Email Spam. Usenet spam
is sent to newsgroups, overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising and
irrelevant posts. Email spam targets individuals by sending direct email
messages to stolen Internet mailing lists or web address found online. One
variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email
discussion forums.) Spammers use automated tools to subscribe to several
mailing lists at one time and to steal the lists of email address or mail the lists
directly.
Spam is commonly referred to as electronic junk mail. But these bulk messages
are more than just a nuisance. Spam mail often contains fraudulent offers and
suspicious incentives. Their methods are designed to transmit the maximum
number of messages, without regard to content or relevance, and sometimes at
the risk of being unlawful. Spam can consist of advertisements for electronic
devices, pharmaceutical drugs, or cash payday loans. It can contain offensive
images to promote pornographic websites. It can also be hostile and contain
viruses and other malware.
In addition to wasting time with unwanted e-mail, spam also consumes a lot of
network bandwidth.
Most of the email marketers send out mass emails without quality content which
at first seems like a viable way to increase business prospects. However, it is not
worth risking the reputation of your company; it can result in major fines, not to
mention that it is illegal. If you send a commercial email, it is important to
understand the laws associated with Internet spam, to avoid getting yourself
reported for spamming. ISP’s sue spammers under the United States federal
CAN-SPAM Act, which became a law in 2004. If you violate this law, they will fine
you for each offense. At a potential fine of $11,000 per offense, you are at risk for
a possible multi-million dollar lawsuit.
How to Bypass Spam Filters
If email marketers are sending commercial emails to sell or promote products or
services, there are a few things that they can do to avoid spam filters.
1. Use clear headers and unique subject titles:
Be sure to use clear headers that are not deceptive, and create unique subject
titles. If you work in sales and you are launching an email campaign, you are
probably not familiar with each person on your mailing list. But, by creating
unique subject titles that are relevant to your recipients, your messages are
unlikely to end up in a spam folder. Make sure all of the information you
include in each email clearly indicates your product or service and the purpose
of your message.
2. Include a physical mailing address and an unsubscribe link:
To avoid being labeled as spam, it is important that you include your physical
mailing address, and an unsubscribe link. The unsubscribe link must work for
thirty days, and you should remove recipients from your mailing list within ten
business days.
3. Avoid generic sales terms:
Spam filters are more likely to divert your emails if they contain generic sales
terms such as advertisement, cash, cheap, congratulations, credit, deal, debt,
degree, disclaimer, free, guarantee, income, investment, marketing,
opportunity, offer, profit, promotion, rich, risk-free, sales, save, spam,
subscribe, trade, and winner. Avoid these terms to ward off potential reports.
3. Use a simple format and include fewer graphics:
Avoid creating email messages that read like brochures. Aside from leaving
out sales lingo and generic terminology, you should also avoid using multiple
fonts, large fonts, and lots of background color. Spam filters assume that any
message that includes several small images is pornographic or adult content.
Graphics do not add merit to your email content; in fact, they hurt your merit.
Your email is much more likely to end up in the inbox if it is modeled like a
business memo or an interoffice email. Use one font, one size, and one color,
and put your time and energy into developing effective content rather than
classic advertisements.
4. Limit the use of URL links:
Most spammers use several URL links sprinkled throughout their emails so
that readers are more likely to click on at least one of them. For this reason,
spam filters are suspicious of messages that contain a lot of URL links. Rather
than including multiple links in your emails, establish the “next step” as a
return email, and if you want the recipient to follow a link, include a single,
prominent URL that does not seem dubious or deceptive.
5. Provide good content:
Include content that is reflective of your reader’s interests and attention span.
There is no point in getting your email into reader’s inboxes if your content is
suspicious or irrelevant. Your email should effectively communicate your
content to the recipient in a way that is refreshing and engaging.
Common Mistakes
There are several mistakes new email marketers making when embarking on an
email campaign for the first time. Following the five steps to avoid spam filters
and avoiding these mistakes will help you to launch email campaigns that are
successful and rewarding.
Avoid these common mistakes:
• Avoid using big, bold, colorful, or flashy fonts, effects, punctuation, and
capital letters. People often make the mistakes of using ALL CAPS IN
THEIR SUBJECT LINE and including too many exclamation points to get
their point across, which can read like spam!!!!!!!!!!
• Avoid sales pitch phrases or generic sales terms like “Click here!” or “Free
Trial!”
• Avoid sloppy HTML coding when converting a Microsoft Word file to
HTML. Designing HTML email in Word and exporting it to HTML is messy
and tends to alert spam filters.
• Avoid HTML emails that include one large image or several small images
in your emails; this is a big trigger for spam filters because they cannot
translate images, so they assume that your message is spam.
How Spam Filters Work
There are many methods spam filters use to determine if your email belongs in
the junk folder. One factor to consider is your sender reputation. According to a
Return Path study, your sender reputation, and not your content, is the major
factor that determines whether your email reaches the inbox. Their study showed
that sender reputation is the cause of 83% of spam filtering. Your sender
reputation or “spam score” is determined based on certain criteria.
Spam filters assign points each time they notice certain phrases included in an
email message. Phrases like “Free!” or “Money Back Guarantee!” or “Buy Now!”
tend to drive up your “spam score” significantly. Once your total spam score
exceeds a pre-determined number, your emails are automatically intercepted and
sent to the junk folder. This number varies from server to server. The list of
criteria that separates spam from newsletters is always evolving to compete with
clever and dubious illegitimate marketing techniques. Spam filters look for image
weight and HTML coding errors; steer clear of those.
Testing your Email Campaigns
There are several tests that you can run before launching your email campaign.
You can choose to go with a service like Inbox Inspector that will determine if
your email will end up in the junk folder. If you do not want to use one of these
services, you can run your own systematic tests to determine if your email will be
filtered. Running your own tests is smart because it helps you to figure out why
your email was blocked. To do this, you will need to separate each part of your
email and identify at-risk content. If you find that your emails are stopped by
spam filters and you want to determine why, start by changing each element in
your email to see if it solves the problem. Change your subject and header; if
your emails are still not making it to the inbox, remove links or URLS, change
your content, remove graphics or evaluate your sales technique to make sure it
does not include too many generic sales terms.
Preventing False Abuse Reports
Major ISP’s deal with millions of spam abuse reports each week; if you are not
careful when you develop your email campaigns, you could easily wind up on a
blacklist. Blacklisting results in an ISP blocking all email from your server. False
abuse reports occur of all the time, and in fact, clean lists are falsely reported as
spam everyday. It only takes a handful of recipients on your marketing list to click
on the Report Spam button before there are serious consequences for your
business and your reputation.
It is important that you always take steps to produce clean content and to use a
legitimate mailing list to avoid spam reports. Even then, you will still receive spam
complaints. There are ways to prevent false abuse reports, such as monitoring
reports from ISP’s, anti-spammers, and blackhole lists. But there is no way to
guarantee that you will never be the victim of a false abuse report.
Part of an ISP’s job is to prevent unwanted or junk mail from reaching their
customers. They will do whatever they need to do to keep spam out, even if it
means blacklisting you.
Reasons for False Abuse Reports
There are many reasons that legitimate email marketers get falsely accused of
sending spam. Oftentimes, it is a simple mistake. Other times, it is the fault of the
marketer. Most of the time, the reason marketers are falsely accused of sending
spam is that they never bothered to ask their recipients for permission to use
their email address. It might seem like common sense that if a past or potential
client provides his or her email address you can send him or her mail. But, most
of the time, these people are not thinking about what you might do with their
email address once you have it. You have to give them the chance to opt-in to
your email-marketing list. Here are some more specific instances where email
marketers could be accused of sending spam.
1. Waiting too long to contact your list:
If you take the time to collect a legitimate list but wait to contact the recipients
included, they may forget that they signed up to receive your newsletters.
2. Not sending out invitations:
If you participate in a trade-show, and the trade-show organization provides
you with a list of attendee email addresses. This can be a great way to bolster
new clients if you first invite them to join your list. Instead of jumping the gun
and sending out newsletters and promos, send out invitations to attendees
and include an explanation about how you got their email address.
3. Business Cards:
If you run a contest to win a free lunch or some other prize, and then you
email the list generated from the contest. This fishbowl technique is often
seen as a threat to recipients, because they did not give you authorization to
send newsletters or advertisements when they signed up for the contest.
4. Purchasing email addresses:
Purchasing or renting email addresses from another company or organization
is a common way to end up on a false report. You need to ask permission
before sending newsletters and promos.
Ways to Prevent False Abuse Reports
The best thing to remember is to always ask for permission to email people, even
if they are your customers. If you do not get permission, you will be reported for
abuse—even if you are sending emails that are 100 percent legitimate. With that
in mind, there are some other rules you can follow to prevent false spam
complaints.
 Set up a separate marketing list for your customers. Provide
incentives to get customers to sign up for your newsletter.
 Never use purchased or rented lists. Even if you acquire a legal list,
sending emails to those addresses is sure to result in complaints.
 Make sure you give recipients the option to unsubscribe. Do not
make your unsubscribe link difficult to find. Place the unsubscribe link at
the top of your email so that it is clearly identifiable. People who are not
interested in receiving your emails are going to mark you as spam if they
feel that they can’t easily unsubscribe.
 Send out professional emails that are neat in appearance and adhere to
the general rules listed above. If your email contains sloppy code or
generic sales content, you will be mistaken for spam.
 Let recipients know what you plan on sending them. If customers opt
to receive your emails, make sure they know what to expect. Let each
person who chooses to subscribe to your newsletter know what you will
send them and how often so that they do not report you as spam.
 Set up a list for promotions and a list for newsletters. Do not make the
mistake of confusing newsletters and promotions. They are very different.
 Do not wait to contact recipients. Set up a system where subscribers
receive emails from you right away. Customers forget who you are when
you wait for months or even years to contact them.
 Do not overwhelm recipients with newsletters and promo offers during
the holiday. The holidays are prime time for spammers to send emails to
unwilling recipients. Avoid this by not becoming too overzealous.
Email Firewalls
Email firewalls, gateways, and security appliances are just one more step in the
spam filtering process. Spam is such a major concern today for ISP’s,
corporations, and small businesses are all using email firewalls to filter spam
before the spam is filtered. Security appliances like IronPort, Cloudmark,
Barracuda Networks, Brightmail, and MessageLabs, are just some of the email
firewalls out there. These gatekeepers are all over the place. They communicate
with one another to determine more effective ways to block spam, and they if
they even suspect that your email is spam, they will block it from ever seeing the
inside of a recipients inbox.
These servers learn which email is spam mail based on feedback from your
recipients. If you send out emails without permission or to recipients who do not
remember subscribing to your list, they can report you to SenderBase. When you
wrack up a list of complaints, they will send your information to IronPort severs
everywhere—leaving your reputation in ruins. These servers rely on sender
scores, or reputation scores, to filter mail before it ever makes it to the content-
based spam filters. Keep your emails out of the hands of these gatekeepers by
keeping your reputation intact and sending out permissions-based emails.
Thanks for reading this guide. If you have any questions feel free to contact us at
www.officevp.com/contact-us/.

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How to Bypass Spam Filters

  • 2. Table of Contents Introduction:........................................................................................................3 What is Spam? ....................................................................................................3 How to Bypass Spam Filters .............................................................................5 Common Mistakes ..............................................................................................7 How Spam Filters Work......................................................................................8 Testing Your Email Campaign...........................................................................8 Preventing False Abuse Reports.....................................................................10 Reasons for False Abuse Reports...................................................................10 Ways to Prevent False Abuse Reports............................................................11 Email Firewalls..................................................................................................13
  • 3. Introduction As a marketer, you want to make sure your email campaigns reach as many legitimate consumers as possible. However, spam filters can make it difficult even when sending legitimate mail to potential clients. If you are one of those email marketers who send out permission-based emails, you will inevitably run into the problem of overly aggressive ISP’s preventing your emails from reaching the inbox. Spam filtering affects innocent email marketers everyday, inhibiting communications efforts and threatening email campaigns. The best way to avoid spam filters is to understand what causes filtering and to determine the standards mailbox providers use to trigger it. Even if you are sending legitimate email newsletters, you will experience the ramifications of spam filtering. Understanding how the spam world functions and the reasons that so many emails are lost in cyber space, is essential to guarantee the success of your email campaigns. What is Spam? Spam is the online equivalent to unwanted door-to-door solicitation. Spammers send out unsolicited emails, which contain the same message to a large number of recipients. Most spam is created for commercial advertising purposes to sell suspicious products or services. The sender can flood the Internet with several versions of the same message—with little cost to them. Most of the costs are incurred by recipients and email providers. There are two main types of spam, Usenet Spam and Email Spam. Usenet spam is sent to newsgroups, overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising and irrelevant posts. Email spam targets individuals by sending direct email messages to stolen Internet mailing lists or web address found online. One
  • 4. variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.) Spammers use automated tools to subscribe to several mailing lists at one time and to steal the lists of email address or mail the lists directly. Spam is commonly referred to as electronic junk mail. But these bulk messages are more than just a nuisance. Spam mail often contains fraudulent offers and suspicious incentives. Their methods are designed to transmit the maximum number of messages, without regard to content or relevance, and sometimes at the risk of being unlawful. Spam can consist of advertisements for electronic devices, pharmaceutical drugs, or cash payday loans. It can contain offensive images to promote pornographic websites. It can also be hostile and contain viruses and other malware. In addition to wasting time with unwanted e-mail, spam also consumes a lot of network bandwidth. Most of the email marketers send out mass emails without quality content which at first seems like a viable way to increase business prospects. However, it is not worth risking the reputation of your company; it can result in major fines, not to mention that it is illegal. If you send a commercial email, it is important to understand the laws associated with Internet spam, to avoid getting yourself reported for spamming. ISP’s sue spammers under the United States federal CAN-SPAM Act, which became a law in 2004. If you violate this law, they will fine you for each offense. At a potential fine of $11,000 per offense, you are at risk for a possible multi-million dollar lawsuit.
  • 5. How to Bypass Spam Filters If email marketers are sending commercial emails to sell or promote products or services, there are a few things that they can do to avoid spam filters. 1. Use clear headers and unique subject titles: Be sure to use clear headers that are not deceptive, and create unique subject titles. If you work in sales and you are launching an email campaign, you are probably not familiar with each person on your mailing list. But, by creating unique subject titles that are relevant to your recipients, your messages are unlikely to end up in a spam folder. Make sure all of the information you include in each email clearly indicates your product or service and the purpose of your message. 2. Include a physical mailing address and an unsubscribe link: To avoid being labeled as spam, it is important that you include your physical mailing address, and an unsubscribe link. The unsubscribe link must work for thirty days, and you should remove recipients from your mailing list within ten business days. 3. Avoid generic sales terms: Spam filters are more likely to divert your emails if they contain generic sales terms such as advertisement, cash, cheap, congratulations, credit, deal, debt, degree, disclaimer, free, guarantee, income, investment, marketing, opportunity, offer, profit, promotion, rich, risk-free, sales, save, spam, subscribe, trade, and winner. Avoid these terms to ward off potential reports. 3. Use a simple format and include fewer graphics: Avoid creating email messages that read like brochures. Aside from leaving out sales lingo and generic terminology, you should also avoid using multiple fonts, large fonts, and lots of background color. Spam filters assume that any
  • 6. message that includes several small images is pornographic or adult content. Graphics do not add merit to your email content; in fact, they hurt your merit. Your email is much more likely to end up in the inbox if it is modeled like a business memo or an interoffice email. Use one font, one size, and one color, and put your time and energy into developing effective content rather than classic advertisements. 4. Limit the use of URL links: Most spammers use several URL links sprinkled throughout their emails so that readers are more likely to click on at least one of them. For this reason, spam filters are suspicious of messages that contain a lot of URL links. Rather than including multiple links in your emails, establish the “next step” as a return email, and if you want the recipient to follow a link, include a single, prominent URL that does not seem dubious or deceptive. 5. Provide good content: Include content that is reflective of your reader’s interests and attention span. There is no point in getting your email into reader’s inboxes if your content is suspicious or irrelevant. Your email should effectively communicate your content to the recipient in a way that is refreshing and engaging.
  • 7. Common Mistakes There are several mistakes new email marketers making when embarking on an email campaign for the first time. Following the five steps to avoid spam filters and avoiding these mistakes will help you to launch email campaigns that are successful and rewarding. Avoid these common mistakes: • Avoid using big, bold, colorful, or flashy fonts, effects, punctuation, and capital letters. People often make the mistakes of using ALL CAPS IN THEIR SUBJECT LINE and including too many exclamation points to get their point across, which can read like spam!!!!!!!!!! • Avoid sales pitch phrases or generic sales terms like “Click here!” or “Free Trial!” • Avoid sloppy HTML coding when converting a Microsoft Word file to HTML. Designing HTML email in Word and exporting it to HTML is messy and tends to alert spam filters. • Avoid HTML emails that include one large image or several small images in your emails; this is a big trigger for spam filters because they cannot translate images, so they assume that your message is spam.
  • 8. How Spam Filters Work There are many methods spam filters use to determine if your email belongs in the junk folder. One factor to consider is your sender reputation. According to a Return Path study, your sender reputation, and not your content, is the major factor that determines whether your email reaches the inbox. Their study showed that sender reputation is the cause of 83% of spam filtering. Your sender reputation or “spam score” is determined based on certain criteria. Spam filters assign points each time they notice certain phrases included in an email message. Phrases like “Free!” or “Money Back Guarantee!” or “Buy Now!” tend to drive up your “spam score” significantly. Once your total spam score exceeds a pre-determined number, your emails are automatically intercepted and sent to the junk folder. This number varies from server to server. The list of criteria that separates spam from newsletters is always evolving to compete with clever and dubious illegitimate marketing techniques. Spam filters look for image weight and HTML coding errors; steer clear of those. Testing your Email Campaigns There are several tests that you can run before launching your email campaign. You can choose to go with a service like Inbox Inspector that will determine if your email will end up in the junk folder. If you do not want to use one of these services, you can run your own systematic tests to determine if your email will be filtered. Running your own tests is smart because it helps you to figure out why your email was blocked. To do this, you will need to separate each part of your email and identify at-risk content. If you find that your emails are stopped by spam filters and you want to determine why, start by changing each element in your email to see if it solves the problem. Change your subject and header; if your emails are still not making it to the inbox, remove links or URLS, change
  • 9. your content, remove graphics or evaluate your sales technique to make sure it does not include too many generic sales terms.
  • 10. Preventing False Abuse Reports Major ISP’s deal with millions of spam abuse reports each week; if you are not careful when you develop your email campaigns, you could easily wind up on a blacklist. Blacklisting results in an ISP blocking all email from your server. False abuse reports occur of all the time, and in fact, clean lists are falsely reported as spam everyday. It only takes a handful of recipients on your marketing list to click on the Report Spam button before there are serious consequences for your business and your reputation. It is important that you always take steps to produce clean content and to use a legitimate mailing list to avoid spam reports. Even then, you will still receive spam complaints. There are ways to prevent false abuse reports, such as monitoring reports from ISP’s, anti-spammers, and blackhole lists. But there is no way to guarantee that you will never be the victim of a false abuse report. Part of an ISP’s job is to prevent unwanted or junk mail from reaching their customers. They will do whatever they need to do to keep spam out, even if it means blacklisting you. Reasons for False Abuse Reports There are many reasons that legitimate email marketers get falsely accused of sending spam. Oftentimes, it is a simple mistake. Other times, it is the fault of the marketer. Most of the time, the reason marketers are falsely accused of sending spam is that they never bothered to ask their recipients for permission to use their email address. It might seem like common sense that if a past or potential client provides his or her email address you can send him or her mail. But, most of the time, these people are not thinking about what you might do with their email address once you have it. You have to give them the chance to opt-in to
  • 11. your email-marketing list. Here are some more specific instances where email marketers could be accused of sending spam. 1. Waiting too long to contact your list: If you take the time to collect a legitimate list but wait to contact the recipients included, they may forget that they signed up to receive your newsletters. 2. Not sending out invitations: If you participate in a trade-show, and the trade-show organization provides you with a list of attendee email addresses. This can be a great way to bolster new clients if you first invite them to join your list. Instead of jumping the gun and sending out newsletters and promos, send out invitations to attendees and include an explanation about how you got their email address. 3. Business Cards: If you run a contest to win a free lunch or some other prize, and then you email the list generated from the contest. This fishbowl technique is often seen as a threat to recipients, because they did not give you authorization to send newsletters or advertisements when they signed up for the contest. 4. Purchasing email addresses: Purchasing or renting email addresses from another company or organization is a common way to end up on a false report. You need to ask permission before sending newsletters and promos. Ways to Prevent False Abuse Reports The best thing to remember is to always ask for permission to email people, even if they are your customers. If you do not get permission, you will be reported for abuse—even if you are sending emails that are 100 percent legitimate. With that
  • 12. in mind, there are some other rules you can follow to prevent false spam complaints.  Set up a separate marketing list for your customers. Provide incentives to get customers to sign up for your newsletter.  Never use purchased or rented lists. Even if you acquire a legal list, sending emails to those addresses is sure to result in complaints.  Make sure you give recipients the option to unsubscribe. Do not make your unsubscribe link difficult to find. Place the unsubscribe link at the top of your email so that it is clearly identifiable. People who are not interested in receiving your emails are going to mark you as spam if they feel that they can’t easily unsubscribe.  Send out professional emails that are neat in appearance and adhere to the general rules listed above. If your email contains sloppy code or generic sales content, you will be mistaken for spam.  Let recipients know what you plan on sending them. If customers opt to receive your emails, make sure they know what to expect. Let each person who chooses to subscribe to your newsletter know what you will send them and how often so that they do not report you as spam.  Set up a list for promotions and a list for newsletters. Do not make the mistake of confusing newsletters and promotions. They are very different.  Do not wait to contact recipients. Set up a system where subscribers receive emails from you right away. Customers forget who you are when you wait for months or even years to contact them.  Do not overwhelm recipients with newsletters and promo offers during the holiday. The holidays are prime time for spammers to send emails to unwilling recipients. Avoid this by not becoming too overzealous.
  • 13. Email Firewalls Email firewalls, gateways, and security appliances are just one more step in the spam filtering process. Spam is such a major concern today for ISP’s, corporations, and small businesses are all using email firewalls to filter spam before the spam is filtered. Security appliances like IronPort, Cloudmark, Barracuda Networks, Brightmail, and MessageLabs, are just some of the email firewalls out there. These gatekeepers are all over the place. They communicate with one another to determine more effective ways to block spam, and they if they even suspect that your email is spam, they will block it from ever seeing the inside of a recipients inbox. These servers learn which email is spam mail based on feedback from your recipients. If you send out emails without permission or to recipients who do not remember subscribing to your list, they can report you to SenderBase. When you wrack up a list of complaints, they will send your information to IronPort severs everywhere—leaving your reputation in ruins. These servers rely on sender scores, or reputation scores, to filter mail before it ever makes it to the content- based spam filters. Keep your emails out of the hands of these gatekeepers by keeping your reputation intact and sending out permissions-based emails. Thanks for reading this guide. If you have any questions feel free to contact us at www.officevp.com/contact-us/.