Best practices for managing your spam folder

The NC State Help Desk often receives calls from campus customers asking why their email has been flagged as spam and relegated to their spam folder. To ensure you receive prompt delivery of your email, follow these helpful tips:

  • Check your spam folder on a regular basis.
    • Depending on your email volume, you should glance at your spam folder daily or weekly.
    • Even though Google may learn what is and is not spam in your Inbox, it is constantly updating and tweaking its spam filtering settings.
  • Links and images can create problems when sending email.
    • If a large volume of your email is marked as spam, make sure all of your email links are valid.
    • Make sure images in your signature file have valid links as well.
  • Keep your messages on target and use descriptive subject lines.
    • Generic subject lines (e.g., update and important) can raise your email’s spam score.
    • Messages with only attachments and no body text may also be tagged as spam.

For more information on spam in general, please see OIT’s Spam Web page.