Guide to Personal Email Filters

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Posted by Justin Premick

Most email clients have a way for users to “whitelist” a sender so that messages from that sender aren’t filtered to the junk folder.

We want your subscribers to see your messages in their inboxes. So, I investigated major email programs to find out what subscribers should do, step by step, to ensure they see your messages.

Mozilla Thunderbird

By default, Thunderbird will not mark your messages as junk if you are in your subscriber’s Address Book. Thunderbird users can check their settings at Tools> Junk Mail Controls.

To add you to their address book, subscribers should create a New Address Book Card under File > New…

Yahoo! Mail (Old)

Yahoo! users should create a filter to direct all messages from you to their inbox. To do this, they:

Click on the “Options” link on the right side of the page
Click the “Filters” link that appears to the right
Click the “Add” link
To the right of the “from contains” line, enter your email address and click “Add Filter”

View a screenshot walkthrough.

Yahoo! Mail (New)

Users of the new Yahoo! mail should also create a filter. Yahoo! currently redirects you to the old mail interface to set up the filter, but in the future should integrate the “Add Filter” page directly into the new interface.

Hotmail

Hotmail uses a “Safe List” that your subscribers should add you to:

Click the “Options” link on the right side of the interface
Choose “Mail” from the left side of the Options page
Click “Junk E-Mail Protection”
Click “Safe List”
Type the sender’s email address into the box and click “Add”

View a screenshot walkthrough.

Windows Live Mail

Not surprisingly, Windows Live Mail works similarly to Hotmail.

Click “Options” link at right and choose “More Options” from the dropdown menu
Choose “Allowed and Blocked Senders”
Click “Allowed Senders”
Type the sender’s email address in the box at left and click “Add to List”

View a screenshot walkthrough.

GMail

GMail will automatically deliver mail from a user’s Contacts list to the inbox.

To add a Contact:

Click the “Contacts” link at left
Near the top of the page, click “Create Contact”
Enter the contact’s name and email address and click “Save”

View a screenshot walkthrough.

AOL Webmail

AOL Webmail has a “Custom Sender List” that users can specify. However, to use the Custom Sender List, users must choose either to accept mail ONLY from their custom senders, or to reject mail ONLY from their custom senders.

So, you need to make sure they are able to receive mail from “all senders.”

Click the “Settings” link at the top of the page
Choose “Spam Controls” from the options at left
Under “Additional Spam Filters” click the “Control From Whom I Get Email” button
A popup appears - choose the first option (Allow mail from all senders)
Click the green “Save” button

If they are already using a Custom Sender List to define who can mail them, you’ll want to make sure they put you on it.

View a screenshot walkthrough.

Tags: ISPs

Print This Post

2 Responses

Paul Myers
November 30th, 2006 at 1:38 pm

It’s not the most commonly used emailer, but Pegasus Mail (http://www.pmail.com) has added some very effective spam filtering capabilities in the latest version.

To add a sender to the whitelist, just right-click on the message, while open or in the list of messages, and select this option on the menu that pops up:

Add sender’s address to | Global whitelist

No mail from that sender will be subject to the content-based or Bayesian filters in the future. Note that any user-specific filter rules you have added will affect the message.
OptInListTactics.com » Blog Archive
July 28th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

[...] Well, here’s a guide that you’ll probably find useful. It shows you how to whitelist an email address in several major email programs, from Mozilla Thunderbird to AOL Webmail. You can use the information in this guide to tell your subscribers on what should they do if they want to whitelist your email address. [...]