Email Deliverability — Avoiding the Spam Triggers
By: Terri Zwierzynski
If you, as many Solo Entrepreneurs, use email to keep in touch with present and prospective clients (always with permission, of course!), you know how hard it is to get emails through these days. Between spam filters, junk mail folders, and sometimes simply the black hole of undelivered email, legitimate small business owners are kept scrambling to catch up (while the spammers are probably laughing at us!)
We recently reviewed how we were sending email, and in addition to a number of security upgrades, we tackled the issue of spam filters and how to avoid triggering them.
A dozen hours of research and a score of emails later, I compiled my conclusions. I share them with you with one caveat — although my data included responses from folks like the CEO of a major email marketing software company, the head of an email service provider, and several highly-regarded email marketing consultants — please don’t consider this to be authoritative expert advice. These are merely the tactics we plan to employ based on my conclusions — your results may vary.
- Never cloak words. Cloaking looks like th.is or th*s.
- Don’t worry too much about the words in your content, with the exception of certain high-trigger words (see Microsoft’s filtering guidelines for an idea of what these are.)
- Do check your subject for potential trouble words.
- The Lyris content-checker (based on SpamAssassin rules) is a good tool: http://lyris.com/resources/contentchecker; Microsoft also publishes their Outlook filtering guidelines: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010450051033.aspx
- I’d steer clear of other lists that folks compile. What triggers the filters is a moving, not to mention hidden, target. The exception would be lists offered by a spam filter system itself, like the ones above.
- Reputation is more important than content. You can start addressing that by making sure your emails comply with standards set by major service providers like AOL (http://postmaster.aol.com/whitelist/whitelist_guides.html) or Yahoo (http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/basics-55.html).
I hope this helps you improve your email deliverability! If you have additional suggestions, please add a comment below.
Last 5 posts by Terri Zwierzynski
- 5 Steps to Get Website Visitors to Subscribe - August 6th, 2008
- Want more subscribers? Start with the right visitors! - July 31st, 2008
- Support that Keeps Us afloat vs. Challenge that Makes Us Grow - July 29th, 2008
- 7 Free SEO Tools -- Courtesy of MarketingSherpa - June 3rd, 2008
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January 17th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
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February 11th, 2008 at 2:36 am
your company apppears to have an information service that tells me all the things I need to do to increase my email deliverability.
I am looking for a service that actually takes action. E.g. if I get on a black list, you get me off. If a domain is blocking my email, you change the IP or do what is necessary. Do you have a service that actually manages the email deliveraibility function rather than just gives me information? The information is of little value when I dont have the time or personnel to implement. I am looking for an outsourced to implement all the good information you might give me.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Hi Larry,
I’ve looked for a service that will help with email deliverability, but have been unsuccessful in finding one. Actually they are out there but they are prohibitively expensive for the solo entrepreneur! (If anyone knows of a email deliverability solution that is reasonably priced in range of what a self employed person can afford, please post it!)
I sympathize with lacking the time to deal with email deliverability issues. I do think that implementing the suggestions above is a great place to start. And I’ll certainly post any additional tips that I learn.
Best of luck,
Terri Z
February 12th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Here’s a few of my tips:
I suggest using a great email marketing service that takes care of the spam for you. Aweber is #1 in the anti-spam world for email marketing. They take spam very seriously and even provide a spam rating for each email message you create. If your rating is too high you can find a mini report of why your rating was high and it highlights spam words/terms that you should consider changing.
Yahoo seems to be blocking List Mail Pro now. I don’t know why or how but a List Mail Pro user was notified of this and told me about it.
Ask subscribers not to use aol accounts.
Educate your target market. Some people press the “spam” button on their email client when they no longer want to recieve your newsletter. This increases your rating as a spammer. So tell your target market how they can unsubscribe and make it obvious.
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