For years senders have been warned away from utilizing “spammy” words that could cause their emails to end up in the spam folder or outright rejected at ISPs. These words (and punctuation) include:
But, here’s the thing: They’re not hurting you and haven’t been for a while now. How do I know? Three reasons:
ISPs have incorporated a massive toolbox of ways to monitor, track and ding senders through reputation and subscriber engagement. Complaints are your biggest enemy, not email copy. If you have a bad reputation at ISPs, regardless of how “clean” your content is, you’re likely not going to get through to the inbox and vice versa.
Worry about improving your list health and how to engage your subscribers with your content instead of laser focusing on what words are or are not kosher. Because ultimately end users, not ISPs these days, determine whether your content is deemed spammy.
One caveat is that individual and company filters are likely to be tighter on what content is and isn’t acceptable, so be aware of this, set up accounts at the major ISPs, partner with companies like Pivotal Veracity for reputation and deliverability monitoring, and test.
And there are a few content pieces you should still focus on when attempting to reach the inbox: incorporating a balanced image to text ratio, avoiding blacklisted urls/domains within the body of your email and ensuring you’re sending valuable, timely content to those subscribers that have opted-in.
Thoughts? Share them in the comments below.
- Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto Software
@KNLorenz
- “Free”
- “Percentage off”
- “Buy now”
- “Urgent”
- ALL CAPS
- Special characters (!, %, $, @, *….)
- “Click here”
- And on and on…
But, here’s the thing: They’re not hurting you and haven’t been for a while now. How do I know? Three reasons:
- Experience with client emails that go out with so-called spammy words in both the subject line and email body and hit the inbox just fine;
- ISPs have evolved to much more advanced tools to track and reject legitimate spam; and
- We see delightful, engaging emails that toe the line of “spamminess” make it into the inbox everyday. Overstock is another great example of a marketer that consistently uses all caps in their subject line to great success.
ISPs have incorporated a massive toolbox of ways to monitor, track and ding senders through reputation and subscriber engagement. Complaints are your biggest enemy, not email copy. If you have a bad reputation at ISPs, regardless of how “clean” your content is, you’re likely not going to get through to the inbox and vice versa.
Worry about improving your list health and how to engage your subscribers with your content instead of laser focusing on what words are or are not kosher. Because ultimately end users, not ISPs these days, determine whether your content is deemed spammy.
One caveat is that individual and company filters are likely to be tighter on what content is and isn’t acceptable, so be aware of this, set up accounts at the major ISPs, partner with companies like Pivotal Veracity for reputation and deliverability monitoring, and test.
And there are a few content pieces you should still focus on when attempting to reach the inbox: incorporating a balanced image to text ratio, avoiding blacklisted urls/domains within the body of your email and ensuring you’re sending valuable, timely content to those subscribers that have opted-in.
Thoughts? Share them in the comments below.
- Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto Software
@KNLorenz
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