Newsletter
June 2007

How to avoid your mailshots ending up in the spam folder

Sending out newsletters and promotions via email is an essential part of any marketeer's armoury, but how can you make sure that the newsletter that you have spent hours crafting is not junked by a spam filter?

First, some statistics so you can see the scale of the problem. Right now (June 2007) about three quarters of the emails sent everyday are spam. That's about 62 billion spam messages a day, and it is clogging up companies' and ISP's (Internet Service Providers') systems. A whole industry has built up to fight the problem, with spam filters an essential part of every commercial operation's IT infrastructure.

So how can you make sure that your legitimate, opted-in, newsletter emails don't get trashed? Knowing how spam filters works will dramatically help you increase the number of emails that get through.

Most spam filters work on a scoring system, looking for clues that indicate that the email might be spam. The total score is added up and if it reaches a certain threshold then the email is let through but the subject line is prefaced with the word "Spam" to warn the user. Reach a higher score and the email is simply deleted without ever reaching the intended recipient.

Ham from Spam

So what adds up to a high spam score? Each organisation can tune their spam filter to work differently, but the most common indicators are:

key words like Viagra, Rolex, porn, nigeria, weight, diet, gamble and words that often go with them such as replica, quality, enhanced, hard, stamina, college, diploma, improve
marketing words and phrases like free sample, click here to buy, buy now, as seen on tv
mangled words and gappy text designed to fool span checkers like fr!ee, m o r t g a g e
lots of HTML formatting, different fonts and WORDS ALL IN UPPERCASE
embedded images
an exclamation mark in the message subject
unsubscribe information
sender's email address not tying up with the name of the mailserver it was sent from (ie, it was sent from fred@genuine.com but the mail server was mail.dodgy.com)
very long lines

Some spam filters, like the open source SpamAssassin, record how the spam score is being built up in the message headers. Examining these will give you clues as to what a spam filter thinks of your email, even if it doesn't flag it as spam.

Hotmail & Co

Webmail providers like Hotmail and Yahoo can be particularly nasty about blocking what they think as spam. As well as all of the above, they also look for senders with high bounce rates. Sending messages to email accounts that don't exist will flag you as a spammer, and all future messages will be blocked. A large number of identical messages simultaneously arriving from the same sender, even if they are all for valid addresses, is also an indication of spam.

Tracking

Many commercial email programs embed tracking devices that can report if an email has been opened, and if the user clicks through to your web site. The danger with the first is that not only will virus checkers disable the tracker, but its detection can also add to the spam score. As many trackers get disabled anyway we think that the measure itself is unreliable and not worth the risk of triggering the spam filter. Click-through tracking is less of a problem.

Whitelists & Blacklists

Spam filters can check blacklists for know sources of spam, and users can whitelist approved senders (like us!) and words that indicate that it is probably not spam (like CRM, for us).

Testing

The best way to test your email for possible spam is to send it through as many spam filters as you can, including to Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo addresses, and see if it gets through. If you can, send it to an address that is checked by SpamAssassin so that you can read how the spam score is being built up in the message headers.

Conclusion

To give your messages the best chance of getting through:

don't use spammy words or phrases
don't use too much HTML formatting or images
don't use uppercase or exclamation marks
don't try to track opening
make sure you clean your list of bounced emails before sending again
send the emails in small batches rather than all at once

More Resources

A good way to check spam scores is to install SpamAware from Jam Software. It is an Outlook toolbar that checks incoming email using SpamAssassin, and adds the spam score and calculations to incoming email headers. Mail your mailshot to yourself from another email address, and check the result.

See also http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/AvoidingFpsForSenders for some more in depth technical advice.

Not Many People Know That

Although Cicero is revered as a famous philosopher and orator, his impact on marketing collateral is less well acknowledged. Many pieces of marketing collateral start life as just the layout design and the words "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua." used as text before the real content is written. This might look like random words, but in fact it comes from "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) written by Cicero around 45 BC. Our thanks to the Lorem Ipsum site for this nugget.

Know somebody who might need a CRM system?

Help a friend or colleague, point them our way and we’ll send you a few bottles of our favourite Hunter Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand for your trouble.

While the boss is away

Ever wanted to fly over and around your home? Well now you can thanks to Goggles, a flight simulator that uses Google Maps. You can even fly around the moon and Mars. (use the arrow keys to guide the 'plane)

If you've never come across The Might Boosh, try "The Legend of Old Gregg".

And if you haven't seen it yet, watch The Zimmers sing "My Generation".

More About Really Simple Systems

Really Simple Systems offers straightforward, easy to use hosted CRM systems to companies of all sizes. To find out more about how simple CRM can be, please visit our home page.