Email Marketing News and Tips

When composing emails for your email marketing campaigns, you want to do everything you can to avoid the junk or spam folder in your recipients’ email clients.  With so many web clients out there including Yahoo, Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) and Gmail, you don’t want to forget your users who may be reading your emails with Outlook.

So, when crafting your email content for your recipients, you will want to be aware of these specific key words documented by Microsoft that will cause your emails to filter into the recipient’s Junk folder.  You will want to avoid using these words and phrases when creating your content.

As of this blog article, the key words and phrases are as follows:

Junk Filter Words and Phrases

First 8 characters of From are digits
Subject contains “advertisement”
Body contains “money back ”
Body contains “cards accepted”
Body contains “removal instructions”
Body contains “extra income”
Subject contains “!” AND Subject contains “$”
Subject contains “!” AND Subject contains “free”
Body contains “,000″ AND Body contains “!!” AND Body contains “$”
Body contains “Dear friend”
Body contains “for free?”
Body contains “for free!”
Body contains “Guarantee” AND (Body contains “satisfaction” OR Body contains “absolute”)
Body contains “more info ” AND Body contains “visit ” AND Body contains “$”
Body contains “SPECIAL PROMOTION”
Body contains “one-time mail”
Subject contains “$$”
Body contains “order today”
Body contains “order now!”
Body contains “money-back guarantee”
Body contains “100% satisfied”
To contains “friend@”
To contains “public@”
To contains “success@”
From contains “sales@”
From contains “success.”
From contains “success@”
From contains “mail@”
From contains “@public”
From contains “@savvy”
From contains “profits@”
From contains “hello@”
Body contains ” mlm”
Body contains “@mlm”
Body contains “///////////////”
Body contains “check or money order”

There are additional words and phrases available at Microsoft’s web site which apply to Adult Oriented emails.  You should also check back with this page periodically to determine any additions.

Avoiding phrases may not prevent Junk filtering

If you find your emails are still being filtered even after avoiding the above phrases, you may need to dissect your email a little at a time and test each piece to determine what additional things may be causing your email to be filtered into Junk.  Microsoft uses not only the list above, but also additional checks to determine what ultimately gets filtered.  As such, you will always want to test and then test again.

Testing your campaigns before sending

As an email marketing professional, you need to realize the value of both scoring your content and testing before you send.  You should always craft your content and then test with each mail client you expect people may be using.  So, if you’re sending to both ISPs and corporations, you will need to test Yahoo, Windows Live Mail, Gmail and any other ISPs (i.e., Comcast, Roadrunner, etc).  Then, for corporations, you will want to test Outlook and possibly Lotus Notes.

Safe Sender List

With the addition of the Junk folder, Outlook 2003 and above added a Safe Sender List.  This list must be enabled by the user in preferences before Outlook will filter email correctly.  However, once enabled, it allows the recipient to specify email addresses that should bypass junk filtering.  Once a user adds your From: email address to their Safe Sender List, this will prevent Junk filtering of your emails.  So, you should request your Outlook recipients to always add your From: address to their Safe Sender List in your mailings.  The Safe Sender List is a separate list managed differently from the address book within Outlook.  So, asking the user to add your address to Outlook’s address book will not suffice to avoid the Junk folder.  The recipient will additionally need to enable the Safe Sender List and add you to it.  This list need only be enabled once.  After that, the recipient can add as many addresses as they wish to this list.

Deliverability

There are lots of things that need to be managed to improve your deliverability.  This is but one step in your deliverability goals.  Boomerang will focus on various aspects of deliverability in upcoming blog articles.  So, stay tuned for more deliverability tips.

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