Following on from last week’s blog regarding on ‘How To Design An Email Marketing Campaign’ this week I thought it maybe be appropriate to continue the theme and analyse in a bit more depth a pit fall that many succumb to: SPAM filters. Unfortunately, even if you are not someone who sends SPAM you can be branded as one; genuine email marketers, sending emails to people who have requested that they be kept informed (permission-based emails) often get they emails spam filtered. A supplier of ours has fallen into the trap: genuine emails keeping their partners informed are now being delivered as “[SPAM] XXX”.
The most important thing is to understand how SPAM filters work.
SPAM filters work on a list of criteria to judge each email: a list of various criteria can be found at SpamAssassin (SpamAssassin is an open-source SPAM filter). Whilst a lot of what is listed may not mean much, what the table outlines is the area of the email that SPAM filters analyse, what they look for and then the score that is assigned to the email being tested of the test is returned as being positive (if you scroll down the list there are some more obvious criteria, such of which probably most email addresses in the world have received at one time or another). There is a ‘magic’ score that each email needs to stay below: the more points each email amasses the near that score they move until… too late… the subject line now reads “[SPAM] XXX”
Some of the common trigger elements are as follows:
- Styling of the email can be an issue
- Font size is large
- Font size is huge
- The colour of the text within the email is similar to the background colour
- If the html of the email is not properly and tidily constructed
- An email that is one big image and no text – each email will be judged on its text to image ratio; this is because spammers have tried to use images to hide the nature of the email as SPAM filters are unable to read images)
- “Test” (in the subject line) – an easy to fall into especially if you are just testing a campaign
- “As seen” (in the subject line) – think about how many emails you have received with the phrase “as seen on TV”
All of the above plus many others will be used to assess the overall email and deem whether it is SPAM or not.
As a result of SPAM filters and being marked as a spammer, you may find that your everyday emails may also be branded as SPAM, or worse still, not delivered: this can be as result of your email server being blacklisted. You can use a variety of websites to test whether your server has been blacklisted:
Each blacklist has its own procedure regarding trying to be delisted: you should check out what is required with each one.
With all this in mind what can you do to avoid being blacklisted: there are now a plethora of email marketing services which allow you to avail yourself of their services. As a result you use their servers and therefore do not risk your everyday communications being treated as SPAM as well. Furthermore, a lot of these allow you to carry out tests against the criteria previously mentioned, before sending, as to whether your campaign will be regarded as SPAM. This in turn will save money, time and a lot of hassle.