Almost a year ago, I blogged about Bacn – “email that you want, just not right now.” The determination of whether or not something is considered bacn is made at the individual (user/consumer/subscriber) level. The consumer chooses to delete, ignore, or mark that “irrelevant” email as spam.
However, often an email can land in the junk folder without the individual doing anything at all. As marketers, this can be very frustrating. Sometimes marketers send out “the perfect email” and it still lands in the bulk folder. Recently, a Bronto Blog subscriber posted an “Ask the Expert” question (abridged version below):
“I have just coded my first HTML email…but when I tested it on Outlook 2007 on a computer in my office, it went straight to the junk folder, stripped to plain text, etc…I read somewhere that if there are links to too many different URL’s it can be interpreted as spam. How many is too many? What other filter criteria might be affecting my email? I was careful not to include “spammy” language.”
That brings us to the $1,000,000 question:
Why do “good” emails sometimes get marked as “bad?”
There are hundreds of reasons why this may happen. Below I will propose a few of the most common ones:
Spam Filters
These can be at the ISP, corporate, and/or user level.
- ISP – Each ISP has a different set of “rules” to determine where an email should end up (bulk or inbox). Gmail has a unique method – go figure.
- Corporate – Almost all companies install some type of corporate spam filter. Many of these are off-the-shelf applications that stop “bad” email before they reach your inbox. One common spam firewall is offered by Barracuda Networks.
- User – Most email clients (both web and desktop) allow users to configure their own rules for what is considered spam. These can be based on key words, subject lines, from names, email addresses, etc. There is not much you can do about this one – other than trying to avoid spammy words.
Blacklists
This category is quite large and I will not attempt to answer all blacklist-related questions here. Suffice to say, blacklists help to keep the internet clear of unsolicited email. They are lists of IPs and/or domains that other organizations reference. They then use these lists to determine what IPs/domains to block, with the goal of eliminately unwanted email. Two of the larger blacklists are Spamhaus and Spamcop, but again…there are hundreds. For more information on blacklists, check out two of my favorite resources, Spam Resource and EmailKarma.net.
Overall, as I say oh-so-often (even told a client on the phone 5 minutes ago)…your best option to avoid the spam folder is to send timely, targeted, relevant email to those subscribers who have asked for it. Simple.
*Thanks to my twitter friends (ahem, Stephanie Miller) for providing title suggestions for this post.
DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto
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For a company that deals with emails and associated information you might want to use proof-readers.
They then use these lists to determine what IPs/domains to block, with the goal of “eliminately” unwanted email.
Otherwise a very good article with good points.
@David: Thanks for the tip. One of the challenges of a post like this is that it could be an entire book. Appreciate your thoughts…
dj