Avoiding Spam Filters - A Few Tips
by matt @ 6:16 pm. Blogged under Web Technology, Email Marketing
Email campaign open rates seem to be continually dropping, this is in part due to the unrelenting volume of messages being received from both illegal and legitimate sources, but also because of increasingly complex spam filtering techniques. Email marketers often ask why their email copy failed to achieve high open and click through rates, usually it’s because of a reliance on blocked graphics or poor audience targeting criteria. However, there are things that can be done to lower the odds of an email falling into a spam filter because of its content.
I decided to take a look at the criteria used by leading spam filtering application ‘Spam Assassin‘ for some clues on what to avoid in an email campaign. Aside from the more obvious HTML compliance checks (such as well constructed HTML, not saved from Microsoft Word or Frontpage) changes to copy are essential. Here are some things to bear in mind, the presence of one of them alone will be unlikely to cause an email to score highly as spam, but the more you have the lower the odds of an email reaching its intended destination:
SUBJECT FLAGS:
> starts with ‘free’
> contains FREE in all caps
> has exclamation mark and question mark
> is all capitals
> starts with dollar amount
> contains ‘For Only’
CONTENT FLAGS:
> contains ‘Dear (something)’
> contains the word ‘free’ in certain phrases (free offer, free leads, free access, free preview)
> contains certain words like ‘guarantee’ in all caps
> contains words like ‘unsubscribe,’ ‘leave,’ and other list removal phrases
> describes some sort of breakthrough
> claims compliance with spam regulations or with US Senate Bill 1618 or House Bill 4176
> contains the phrases: what are you waiting for, while supplies last, while you sleep
> asks you to ‘click below’
> uses a Nigerian scam key phrase such as “million dollars�
> money back guarantee
> urges you to call now or claims you can be removed from the list
LAYOUT FLAGS:
> uses font sizes that are 2 + or bigger
> background in an HTML email that isn’t white
> HTML font color is gray, red, yellow, green, blue, magenta or ‘unknown to us’
Read the full list of spam criteria used in Spam Assassin’s spam identification technique to get the big picture.
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Technorati Tags: spam filters, spam filtering, email marketing, spam
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March 14th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Dear doctor. I have already received 643 SPAM e mails this week and it’s only Wednesday. What can I do? No joke!
March 15th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Use Spam Assassin? Is your email address listed on the web somewhere to be crawled by naughty spiders? My email spam isn’t so bad but this blog is getting 100 bogus ‘viagra’ comments each day now (filtered by Akismet)
March 15th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Actually this one isn’t a problem - RM filter absolutely everything, (which is why I couldn’t read your 20week scan item! see Kebab House for reply)it’s the one I use at school which is obviously a public site. So much Spam It’s enogh to turn one vegetarian. Oh. I am vegetarian. I’ll mention SPAM ASSASSIN to the technician.Thanx