Email Spam Filters: 5 Big Triggers

One of the biggest worries for any online marketer is to have one's time and effort go down the drain when spam filters classify the marketing material sent as spam. Trying to beat a filter is not an easy task because these filters use complicated mathematics to try and learn for themselves what is spam and what is not. The two methods that spam filtering software use are the Bayesian method and the Markovian method. Both of these have their roots in a mathematical function called probability and statistics. Software that is based on these two methods learns by identifying patterns in mails that are marked as spam by users. Though a lot of information is preloaded and hardcoded into their library of dubious tags, the software analyses each mail that is tagged as spam by a user for keywords and the number of times that a keyword turns up. This is how the Bayesian method works. The Markovian method, on the other hand, works by analyzing entire phrases and is much more efficient at catching spam mail.

Beating the spam filter requires first that you get the users trust and this can be done by simply asking the user to opt-in by a confirmation mail. While this is the first pre-requisite, the rest is up to a copywriter's skill and writing style. Some of the triggers that spam filters pick up on are the repeated use of a word. Therefore, if you are selling something, you will ruin your chances by highlighting that aspect in your mails. Keep it subtle and just mention your product once or twice at the most. The next step is to avoid making phrases that might sound dubious or a long-drawn out way of saying the same thing. This might take some practice to perfect. You can do this by creating a mail account and then testing the content in your mail by sending it to that mail account. If it goes to the spam folder then you need to tweak that content a bit more until you get it right.

There is a lot that has to be said about some material just being spam by nature of the product. Adult material just cannot avoid a spam filter unless unchecked personally by the user. The first thing that you need to do if you are dealing in adult material is not to include images and to keep your text free of all kinds of suggestive words and phrases.

Spam filters also recognize mail addresses that could be dubious. Do not try and mask your message with aliases that sound like regular names and do not use subject lines like, "you owe me money."

Keep the text in your emails at a minimum and try as much as you can to redirect the user back to your website instead. In today's internet world, more business occurs over seeing interesting slugs on websites rather than in emails that are deemed to be spam.