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Maximizing Your Delivery How Permission Marketers Avoid Spam Filters -- by Chip House A recent study shows that the average email user will receive over 700 unsolicited commercial email messages this year and nearly 1600 in 2006. Since ISPęs and other organizations are overwhelmed by the amount of incoming email, many have added filtering mechanisms to block unsolicited email or –spam.” Problem is, filters block not only sp^am, but also permission-based email erroneously identified as spam. Reducing sp^am is good, yes! But it has also created some problems. Legitimate permission marketers are having difficulty getting emails delivered to their customers. It is getting rough out there. For example, I used the caret •^ę in the word above to prevent filters from labeling this email as spa^m. Many filters target seemingly innocent phrases such as –click here,” or –be your own boss,” meaning many permission emails that people have asked for go undelivered. What to do? Permission marketers do have ways to avoid filtering, the foremost of which is picking words and phrases carefully. At ExactTarget, weęve launched two new features to enable our clients to communicate with their customers without their emails being falsely identified as spam. Content Detective This feature mirrors the logic used by spam filtering software to identify words, phrases, and patterns that are likely to trigger filters, then recommends a resolution to each identified problem, before an email is sent. List Detective This feature scans lists uploaded to ExactTarget, and identifies email addresses that may not be permission based. These include known unsolicited addresses, planted addresses, and addresses that donęt belong to an individual, such as postmaster@ or abuse@. Spam filtering software uses subject line and email body content filtering primarily, but they also use volume filtering and block listing to prevent unsolicited emails out. Marketers should first focus on their subject line, and make sure that it does not include all capital letters, multiple dollar signs or exclamation points, and does not contain spam phrases such as –Win Today”, –Free Offer,” or –Apply Now”, etc. Any one of these phrases alone is not likely to trip a filter. However, since most popular filters such as SpamAssassin (www.spamassassin.org), use point scoring system, these phrases will all add to your spam score. Second, a marketer should focus on the body of their email and ensure that highly promotional words are used very sparsely. It is also important for the email to contain a greeting, such as –Dear Susan.” Since most spam lists contain nothing but email addresses, using a personalized greeting in your email helps reduce your spam score and increases the likelihood that the email will make it to its intended recipients. Volume filtering and block listing are of equal importance, but more difficult to control without professional help. First let me define them. Many ISPęs use volume based filters to detect bulk mailing operations that send spam. Since most spammers attempt to send thousands of emails through each ISP, volume filters attempt to detect incoming spam by monitoring the number of simultaneous connections a mailer is attempting to make. If too many connections are made at the same time, or too many bad or phony addresses are included in the list, the ISP will block this email as spam, and send it to the –bulk” folder or delete it entirely. How does a marketer avoid volume filtering? By selecting an email service or software that provides the ability to monitor and adjust volumes by ISP to ensure their email is being delivered. Selecting a reputable service provider is also important when avoiding being falsely placed on an anti-spam block list. A block list, also known as a black list, is a list of companies, along with their corresponding IP addresses, that are suspected of spamming. These lists are used by many ISPęs to filter email. For example, when and ISP receives an email they check the IP address of the sender against one or more block lists. If the sender is on a block list, the email is filtered and is not delivered to the addressee. If your mail server, or your service provider is on a block list, as much as 30% of your email could go undelivered. Maintaining sound permission practices, and relationships with ISPęs is key to preventing your from being placed on a block list. By choosing the appropriate email service provider, who has relationships in place with major ISPęs, your emails will avoid block listing and will make it to your intended audience. |
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