Blocking spam affects marketers

Local web and emarketing software company, Envent, says the introduction of Sender ID is a step in the right direction in the war against spam, but is going to prove problematic for marketers who use email to communicate with customers.

Product and Marketing Director John Ginsberg says: "Every message comes from an originating mail server, which has a unique address. This address is used to determine where to bounce the message back to, if it can't reach its intended recipient. With Sender ID, if a spammer sends a message, which appears to come from one server, but in fact comes from another, Sender ID will block it.

"The problem for marketers is that they do not typically send emails from the same server as the one on which they receive messages. In order to prevent their messages from getting blocked or landing up in the junk mail folder, marketers need to have Sender ID enabled for each domain name that they own and from which they send mail."

In an effort to assist marketers, Envent will be creating a page of instructions for the setting up of Sender ID, which marketers can send to their IT departments. The page can be accessed by using the following link on Envent's website: www.envent.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=104.

Ginsberg urges marketers to step in and ensure that the correct set-up is in place: "The technical people won't be affected by the implementation of this Spam policy, as they don't need to get messages through to customers.

"The onus is on the marketer to become proactive in this regard, but we hope our page of instructions will help to simplify the process considerably."