Ste Drayton

Seasoned Writer. Marinated Copywriter. Soaked in Digital.

How to avoid having your email being mistaken for SPAM

If you want to lessen your chances of being marked as spam avoid the following when creating emails:

  1. Using one or more lines of “YELLING” (i.e., all-caps) in the body of the message
  2. Including Microsoft executable programs in the body of the message
  3. Having at least 70 percent blank lines in the body of the message
  4. Having the message header indicate that the message was sent directly from dynamic IP address
  5. The message from field appears to not contain a real name
  6. The message from field ends in numbers
  7. The message header contains numbers mixed in with letters
  8. Message to: field contains space
  9. Message Reply to field is empty
  10. Subject has exclamation mark and question mark
  11. The subject in ALL-CAPS
  12. Message From: field contains the term “friend”
  13. Message subject includes the term “offer” or starts with an advertising tag
  14. Subject starts with dollar amount
  15. Subject contains “Double Your” / “As Seen”/ “For Only” /”FREE”/”Free Instant”
  16. The message contains excessive images without much text
  17. Incorporating a tracking ID number in the body of the message
  18. Message body claims NOT to be spam

Phrases to avoid :

Interactive Agency, email marketing strategieshttp://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm

Interactive Agency, email marketing strategieshttp://www.thinkavenue.com/articles/marketing/article37a.htm

For a great list of words to avoid so you don’t look like spam, check out

Interactive Agency, email marketing strategieshttp://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm

  • If your HTML message has more than 50% HTML tags, it may appear to be spam.
  • Use capitalization carefully – too many capital letters can be seen as “yelling” or feel “spammy”.
  • Keep your HTML simple – according to SpamAssassin, if your HTML message has more than 50% HTML tags, it may appear to be spam.
  • All caps in a subject line is a bad thing, as are including question marks and exclamation points.
  • Make
    sure the contents of the Name and/or Subject field are recognizable by
    your readers. Use your brand in one or both of these fields. Be
    especially careful with subject lines. Beware of starting your subject
    line with “free”, “hello” or a dollar amount. Never use FREE in CAPS in
    a subject line. All caps in a subject line is a bad thing, as are
    including question marks and exclamation points.

  • Avoid spam-like tactics (in the from line, subject line and email copy)
  • ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
  • Excessive punctuation
  • Excessive use of “click here,” $$, and other symbols
  • Misleading subject lines
  • The words fr^e, guarant^e, sp^m, cr^dit card, s^x, etc.
  • *If
    these words are essential to your message, use a variation – fr*e or
    fr^e – as I did above, to avoid being incorrectly filtered.

Unfortunately, permission based email marketing, if not conducted
properly can be considered spam by consumers. So even though you may
have acquired permission from a user to send him/her email if you’re
not careful you may be classified as a spammer.

DoubleClick found that consumers have a fairly consistent view on what makes email spam. Be sure to avoid these 5 mistakes.

  • Don’t use deceptive subject lines that try to trick the user into opening the message.
  • Don’t send messages from an unknown sender and unknown “From” address.
  • Don’t include offensive subject matter in your message.
  • Don’t send email too frequently.
  • Don’t send irrelevant emails on topics not requested.
Learn - by Ste Drayton