Many times we get excited to know that someone has taken their time to send us an email (or even a basic SMS). However, marketers (and spammers) have capitalised on this and started sending messages that are rather appealing to try and get you to act.
Usually you can detect if an email is spam by the following:
1. If it ends up in your spam folder. Usually email clients have filters in place that allow emails to be automatically marked as spam.
2. It is from a sender that you do not know or if it purports to be from a company but is from a Gmail or Yahoo email address. Companies use (or at least they should be) official email addresses and not johndoe@yahoo.com or something like that
3. The email asks for your personal information. Most companies highlight from the beginning that they will not ask you for your private information via an email and if you get any such email, never click on the links that direct you to the company's "website". Rather, enter the web address in your address bar on your own.
4. Look out for the English. Most times the writers are from West African (no, I never said Nigeria, I just said West Africa!!!) and their command of the English language is not that good. Be sure to use this as a gauge (this is a smack in the face for those companies that choose to write poorly worded emails to their clients).
5. Look at the Greeting. When you receive a genuine email, the sender addresses you directly, using either your first or last name. If you receive an email where they refer to you as a “Valued Customer” or as a member of some company, its spam. Senders of your genuine emails want to get your attention, so they always address you directly. We don’t know about you, but when we read “Dear Valued Customer,” our eyes begin to glaze over and our mouse cursor can’t drag it to the trash fast enough.
Hope this helps you in weeding out the spammers out there.
Check out this proposal for how to stop spam:
http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2013/03/20/lets-hit-spammers-where-it-hurts-a-simple-plan-to-stop-spam/
