False Positive

What is it?

What is it?

In email marketing, a "False Positive" refers to a situation where a legitimate email message is incorrectly classified as spam or junk by an email filtering system and consequently not delivered to the recipient's inbox. False positives can occur due to various factors, such as aggressive spam filtering algorithms, content triggers, sender reputation issues, or user-defined filtering rules.

Key points to remember

Key points to remember

  • Legitimate Emails: False positives occur when email filtering systems mistakenly identify genuine, non-spam emails as spam or junk based on specific characteristics or criteria.

  • Impact: False positives can lead to missed opportunities for legitimate senders as their emails fail to reach recipients' inboxes, decreasing engagement, response rates, and campaign effectiveness.


  • False Positive Causes: Factors contributing to false positives include overly aggressive spam filtering settings, outdated or inaccurate spam detection algorithms, inconsistent sender authentication practices, and poor sender reputation.


  • Mitigation Strategies: To reduce the risk of false positives, email marketers can implement best practices such as using permission-based marketing tactics, optimizing email content to avoid spam triggers, authenticating sender domains with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, monitoring sender reputation, and engaging with mailbox providers to address deliverability issues.


  • Monitoring and Remediation: Continuous monitoring of email deliverability metrics, engagement rates, and feedback loops can help identify false positives and take corrective actions such as adjusting email content, improving sender reputation, or contacting mailbox providers for whitelisting.

Example of Use

Example of Use

  1. Newsletter Filtering: A subscriber's email provider mistakenly categorizes a company's monthly newsletter as spam due to specific keywords or content triggers, diverting the newsletter to the spam folder instead of the inbox.


  2. Transactional Emails: A confirmation email containing important account information from an e-commerce website is incorrectly flagged as spam by the recipient's email client, causing the customer to miss critical updates about their order status.

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