Some things can be a bit more out of the marketer’s control but nevertheless affect their opinion of your email messages. Phishing scams certainly don’t help out any major brands, especially ones in the financial sector that are targeted heavily by phishers.

Does your company address phishing on its website and privacy policy? Do you have a contingency plan for phishing scams on your brand? Well, you should as these could damper your email efforts to your subscribers, who may be so overwhelmed by fake emails that they just delete all emails that appear to be from your brand, legitimate or not.

Third-party data collection is a grey area for most email marketers and subscribers. As acquisition efforts are always of great importance for email marketers -- have you hit your numbers yet? -- many go outside of their website, stores and brand to gather new addresses. Popular methods include co-registration, append, rentals, sweepstakes and the like. However, these have a downside in that the subscriber often fails to remember signing up or didn’t intend to receive emails from your company. This can result in a quick and brutal backlash.

Finally, and perhaps the most important item to deter confusion and spam associations, is to make sure your email messaging is relevant to your subscribers and the original value proposition they signed up for.

Conclusion
Engler, of UnsubCentral, sums up the situation: "If your customers perceive your email as spam, guess what? It is. And that might hurt your reputation with them in the short-term and in the long-term."

Put yourself in your subscribers’ shoes and review your email proofs to make sure you don’t piss those customers off. Most marketers shouldn’t be willing to take that chance.