As an Edge Sender user, you’ve probably heard of ‘phishing’- the attempt to steal someone’s private information (like passwords) by getting them to click a link that takes them to a fraudulent website. What you may not be aware of is that phishing detection is built in to some email clients, and could be preventing those emails from ever being seen.
Usually, that’s very useful for protecting people, but it sometimes will accidentally catch legit emails, like those sent from Edge Sender. Here’s how this affects your business:
The Issue
One of the methods that email clients use to detect phishing is by comparing the actual URL to the text that is displayed to the person reading the email. When you add links to your campaigns, Edge Sender automatically converts them to a special URL, which tracks clicks and then sends the user to the original URL. This is done so we can provide you with detailed reporting on who clicked what links in your email campaign.
While the original HTML code might be
<a href=”http://www.yourcompany.com“>http://www.yourcompany.com</a>
once you have added it to your campaign, it will look something like
<a href=”http://my.edgesender.com/…/y/l/dijkdh/l/t“>http://www.yourcompany.com</a>
That mismatch between the link text (which is http://www.youcompany.com) and the actual href URL is what phishing detection software can pick up on, and may trigger a bounce, or send your email campaign directly to the user’s spam folder.
The Easy Solution
Just make sure you don’t use URLs as the visible link text when creating a new campaign. Instead, use a call to action along with the website’s name, like
<a href=”http://www.yourcompany.com“>Visit the YOUR COMPANY website</a>
By doing that, there won’t be a mismatch in the links, and no potential security issues with your reader’s inbox. It’s really easy to avoid, now that you know about it.
Photo credit: Don Hankins
