Overall message:
Lately, more emails are being flagged and/or blocked due to
the excessive amount of links included on employee signature blocks. As a result,
agencies should consider reevaluating how many links are included in their
employee signature blocks.
Although this may not seem like an issue to the agency user,
it is most likely because they are unaware that this is happening. In most
cases, emails are being blocked as they enter other corporation’s gateways or
as they enter ours, and the intended recipient isn’t even aware it is
happening.
Technical details:
Most email gateways run on a “point system.” When you
incorporate links for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. into your
signature block; points are assigned to these items for security purposes. The
more links you incorporate, the more likely it is that your email will be
flagged and/or blocked as spam to outside email addresses.
Sometimes the emails will initially go through to those
outside of our infrastructure. However, when the remote user tries to respond,
in combination with the links they may have included in their signatures, our
email gateway will block remote users email responses on their way back into
our system. As a result, the intended recipient never receives a
response.
BIT recommends only including one link at the
bottom of employee signature blocks. Feel free to use as many icons as you
want:
But rather than using multiple link locations, make sure
the link goes back to one location.
For example, BIT would use bit.sd.gov as
the link for all of the above icons; which would then guide the user to our
homepage where they could navigate freely to the intended destination of their
choice. While we realize this is not the most practical or efficient way to go
about this, we cannot control gateways outside of our infrastructure and what
they choose to block. Limiting your email signature links is the most effective
way to ensure that your message will not be blocked by other gateways.