You might not get email that you've asked for, thanks to the laziness (we'll hope it's not malice) of other people. When people subscribe to newsletters and then mark them as spam instead of unsubscribing, it "trains" email providers to treat those opt-in newsletters as junk. As a result, your mail provider may toss newsletters you want to see into your spam folder where they may be deleted before you know they're there. They might even reject the newsletter entirely, not even putting it into your spam folder, so you have literally no chance to see it. All because someone else falsely reported the senders for spamming.
What can you do to fix the problem? Unfortunately, there's no perfect answer. However, here are some ideas that will help you get the information, news, offers, and other content that you asked to receive:
- If you find a newsletter you requested in your Spam folder, check the "Not Spam" button or link (the wording will depend on your mail provider)
- If you find a newsletter you want to read promptly in your Promotions tab in Gmail, and if you don't check that tab much, you can drag the newsletter to your main inbox to train Gmail to send future newsletters from the same sender to your main inbox. (Such training is imperfect at best, but I guess we get what we pay for...)
- Adding a newsletter's sending email address to the contacts in your mail provider's system might help train your mail provider to not throw those newsletters away. (For example, the sending email address for my newsletter is newsletter /at/ stuartwhitmoreauthor.com, making the obvious @ replacement.)
Of course, you can also help avoid causing problems for other people by always using the unsubscribe link when you decide to sign off from a newsletter.