Here's a quandry. CAN-SPAM, best practices, and just being a good mailer all require that you have a working unsubscribe link. But, many spam filters - including some widely deployed spam filters, consider words like "click here to unsubscribe" or "click here to stop receiving these maillings" as an indicator that the email containing the phrase may be spam. So what's an email sender to do?
One of the things that spam filters look at is the text:image ratio of your email. Did you know that? If you've ever gotten one of those spam messages which has a big old image, and only a little text, or perhaps even one of those spam messages where the text is embedded in an image, you can understand the reason for this. It's because spammers likes to send messages with images and little text - because of course the spam filters are analyzing their text.
Most of us probably remember George Carlin's (may he rest in peace) "7 Words You Can't Say on TV". What fewer
realize is that there is a list of words that you may not want to say in email, as if there is already a reason for inbox providers to look askance at your email, they may push it over the edge, into spam filter territory. (If your email is otherwise squeaky clean then these won't matter as much, if at all.) And, actually, there are a whole lot more of them than seven.
Email address confirmation messages are those messages that email senders who use best practices send to people who sign up for their mailing lists. The purpose of the email confirmation message is to confirm that the person actually wants to be on, and consents to being put on, your mailing list before they get added to the mailing list. The problem is, some email senders see confirmation messages as a place to slip in a little advertising.
You know, sometimes it's the silliest, most boneheaded things which trip us up. This is true for your email too. See if you can spot the mistakes in this email (this is a genuine, unretouched email, other than our changing the name of the service to "Geegaw" in order to protect the hapless).
One of the many things that we explain to people in our Email Deliverability Handbook is that while you must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, you shouldn't say that you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. This advice may seem counter-intuitive, however here's why.
Did you know that certain popular buzzwords can actually hurt your deliverability when used in your email subject line? No, we're not talking about so-called 'spam trigger words', although those are still a thing despite what some may say. And did you know that personalization in your email subject line (and even in your opening salutation) can also hurt your deliverability?
Did you know that political (and religious) speech is exempt from CAN-SPAM regulations in order to avoid issues of First Amendment violations? Most political emails are formatted in the eye-catching HTML format, and so are now going to be the types of formats that will be frequently flagged by those being spammed by politicians.
The first true marketing email did not arrive until 1978, when a company called DEC (which became part of Compaq, now HP) sent an invitation to the product launch of a new machine to all addresses in the ARPANET directory on the USA's West Coast. They were heavily criticized for the act, which broke the ARPANET appropriate use policy, and everyone else was reminded of the rule.
We wanted to do a mid-year check-in to remind you to make sure that your emailing practices are staying in tip-top shape, and that your email marketing campaigns were minding their p's and q's to ensure maximum deliverability.
