It's time for another Spam Resource Tuesday Tip. The goal? To share short and actionable deliverability tips and tricks. More often simple hacks than deep deliverability dives.
This time around: Were you worried about using the word free in your subject line? What about in ALL CAPS?! What about extra exclamation points!!! Are you offering an opportunity to make money fast? With low money down and guaranteed dividends? How are you going to talk about these in your email message, since they're spam words that you need to avoid?
Except…they're not! While good content matters, it matters more from a strategy and engagement perspective. What messaging is less likely to look like spam to subscribers, what wording is most likely to catch eyeballs (and clicks) from subscribers.
Mailbox provider spam filters DO NOT sit there and watch for an email with FREE in the subject line and then kick it over to the spam folder based on that alone. That's content-based filtering, and it's quite outdated and when used alone, prone to false positives.
Thus, all those warnings to avoid the top X spam trigger words in your email content ... are silly!
Once in a while content ends up actually mattering. Every once in a while you might stumble on Microsoft putting all mail in the spam folder if it has "wombat" in the subject line. Weird stuff like this has actually happened to me. Usually because of some legacy spam filter rule they've got in place. But it's rare. You're not going to run into it often, and it's easy to test against when needed (this is where a "neutral content test" comes in handy).
Back in the day, we used to alway say that it's about consent, not content. Still true, but if you add in how most spam filters work today, it's about engagement, which roughly correlates to consent and also interest – but still, not so much about content. Content filtering is a distant consideration, far down the list of things you really need to worry about.
Heck, I probably run into it more than you do. Running a discussion list talking about spam and deliverability, means sometimes we talk about domain reputation issues and we sometimes include domains we talk about. Those domains, just in the content, sometimes trigger spam filtering. But even that is usually not REALLY a content issue, but more of a domain reputation issue.
Except…they're not! While good content matters, it matters more from a strategy and engagement perspective. What messaging is less likely to look like spam to subscribers, what wording is most likely to catch eyeballs (and clicks) from subscribers.
Mailbox provider spam filters DO NOT sit there and watch for an email with FREE in the subject line and then kick it over to the spam folder based on that alone. That's content-based filtering, and it's quite outdated and when used alone, prone to false positives.
Thus, all those warnings to avoid the top X spam trigger words in your email content ... are silly!
Once in a while content ends up actually mattering. Every once in a while you might stumble on Microsoft putting all mail in the spam folder if it has "wombat" in the subject line. Weird stuff like this has actually happened to me. Usually because of some legacy spam filter rule they've got in place. But it's rare. You're not going to run into it often, and it's easy to test against when needed (this is where a "neutral content test" comes in handy).
Back in the day, we used to alway say that it's about consent, not content. Still true, but if you add in how most spam filters work today, it's about engagement, which roughly correlates to consent and also interest – but still, not so much about content. Content filtering is a distant consideration, far down the list of things you really need to worry about.
Heck, I probably run into it more than you do. Running a discussion list talking about spam and deliverability, means sometimes we talk about domain reputation issues and we sometimes include domains we talk about. Those domains, just in the content, sometimes trigger spam filtering. But even that is usually not REALLY a content issue, but more of a domain reputation issue.
So, please. Do not believe the hype! With only a few tiny exceptions, spam folder issues based on a single word or two, this is just not a real thing nowadays.
2
Comments
I love your Article Al' ,
ReplyDeleteI believe what you say is 100% true for the US market, but as for the french market, not necesseraly, two big MBP in France, Orange and laposte, still use bayesian filters, and some use Vadesecure, wich we have also internally, wich still flag as spam due to the presence of certain words (funny thing, i remediated 5 time spamressource, still goes to spam because vade detect the word ... spam)
Thanks, Alexandre! That is very useful information. :)
ReplyDelete