Although this is kind of an obvious tip, using your Contact List will allow the e-mail you want to come thru rather than be flagged as spam. To be best of my knowledge this works with all e-mail services and programs.

Recently I discovered my Gmail was flagging e-mails as spam by mistake, so I had to comb thru the Spam "folder" to un-spam a bunch of them.

This could have been prevented easily if I had added certain e-mail addresses to my Contact List beforehand (which I did shortly afterwards).

Where it might be not-so-obvious to use the Contact List is with e-mail newsletters and notifications. While it’s true that most e-mail services will auto-add e-mail addresses you reply to, ordinarily you never reply to a newsletter. What this means is that it never gets added to the Contact List, so you must do it manually.

Adding a Contact: Gmail

1. Open the e-mail
2. Look to the far right and click the small down arrow next to "Reply"
3. The menu that appears will contain a choice to add to Contact List.

Adding a Contact: Yahoo! Mail (Classic Interface)

1. Open the e-mail
2. Click "Add to Address Book" link at the top

Adding a Contact: Yahoo! Mail (New Interface)

1. Open the e-mail
2. Click "Add" link at the top

Adding a Contact: Hotmail (Classic Interface)

Note: It’s a pain in the butt to use Contacts with the Hotmail Classic interface. It’s strongly recommended you use the Full Interface instead.

1. Open the e-mail
2. Copy the e-mail address
3. Click "Contacts" (left)
4. Click "New" (above contact list)
5. Fill in information
6. Click "Save" (top)

Adding a Contact: Hotmail (Full Interface)

1. Open the e-mail
2. If the e-mail is not "marked as safe", do so.
3. Click "Add Contact"

Note: If there is no option to add a contact, the address is most likely in your Contacts already. Check to make sure if this is the case.