Can we put the FREE!!! Myth to bed?

Really. Single words in the subject line don’t hurt your delivery, despite many, many, many blog posts out there saying they do. Filters just don’t work that way. They maybe, sorta, kinda used to, but we’ve gotten way past that now.
In fact, I can prove it. Recently I received an email from Blizzard. The subject line:
Laura — Last Chance to Claim Your FREE Copy of Warlords of Draenor — Including Level 90 Boost! Offer Expires Monday! Last Chance to Claim Your FREE Copy of Warlords of Draenor — Including Level 90 Boost! Offer Ends Monday!
We have an email with

… two instances of FREE in all caps

… 4 different exclamation points

… Offer Expires

… Last Chance

… Unsubscribe

all right there in the subject line.
And what does Spamassassin say about the mail?

X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-7.193 tagged_above=-999
required=6.31 tests=[BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1,
DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1,
HTML_IMAGE_RATIO_04=0.556, HTML_MESSAGE=0.001,
RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED=-2.3, RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H3=-0.01,
RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_WL=-0.01, RCVD_IN_RP_SAFE=-2,
RP_MATCHES_RCVD=-1.428, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001,
SPF_PASS=-0.001] autolearn=ham
autolearn_force=no

See that first line? X-Spam-Flag: NO
See the next line: score=-7.193. Notice the negative? That’s almost 14 points less than what is needed for our installation of SpamAssassin to mark a message as spam.
Words in the subject line are not used for filtering in any sane filter.
Exclamation marks don’t trigger filters. 
FREE does not trigger filters. 
It’s time to retire the myth that spam filters pay any special attention to the subject line. They don’t. In fact, to a mail server the Subject line is just another bit of content. One that is only special because it starts with a defined field name (Subject), has a colon and contains a line terminated by CRLF. In fact, a subject line isn’t required for an email.

The only required header fields are the origination date field and the originator address field(s). All other header fields are syntactically optional. More information is contained in the table following this definition. Section 3.6, RFC5322

Section 3.6, RFC5322

Filters don’t treat the subject line any differently than the rest of the email content.
(For the Horde.)

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Are you blocking yourself?

One thing that catches me up with clients sometimes is their own spam filters block their own content. It happens. In some cases the client is using an appliance. The client’s reputation is bad enough that the appliance actually blocks mail. Often these clients have no idea they are blocking their own mail, until we try and send them something and the mail is rejected.
stop_at
Typically, the issue is their domains are the problem. We mention the domains in email, and the filters do what filters do. We work around this by abbreviating the domains or calling, it’s not a big deal.
It’s a great demonstration of content filters, though. The content (the client’s domain) is blocked even when it comes from an IP with a good reputation. In fact, with Gmail I can often tell “how bad” a domain reputation is. Most mail I send from WttW to my gmail address goes to the inbox, even when the client is reporting bulk foldering at Gmail. But every once in a while a domain has such a bad reputation that any mail mentioning that domain goes to bulk.
Most folks in the deliverability space know the big players in the filtering market: Barracuda, Cloudmark, ProofPoint, etc. Those same people have no idea what filters their company uses and have never even really thought about it.
Do you know what filter your company is using to protect employees from spam?
 
 
 

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Subject lines

There has been a lot of discussion in various places recently about subject line length and how it affects email marketing. There have been multiple studies done on how the subject line affects opens and clicks. (Mailchimp, Alchemy Worx, Mailer Mailer, Adestra). The discussion has even spilled over into Ken Magill’s newsletter today.
I’ve had a couple people ask me my opinion on subject line over the years. My general response is that subject line length is not directly measured by spamfilters and so don’t fret about the length. It is true that consistently crafting poor subject lines can indirectly cause delivery problems. Send mail few people open and that will hurt your reputation over time.
I think Ken really said it best, though.

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Truths and Myths about email deliverability

virtualShow_forblogKen Magill will be interviewing me on the Truths and Myths of Email Deliverability, November 12 at the 2015 All About eMail Virtual Conference & Expo. Ken has a bunch of questions he wants to ask me, but he’s also expecting to take a lot of questions from the audience as well.
Speaking of myths, there has been discussion lately about recycled spamtraps. Apparently, there are people who believe (believed?) that every ISP uses recycled spamtraps. When Hotmail and Gmail said recently they didn’t use recycled traps people got very upset that they believed something that was not true.
It’s a mess. There is so much about email that is like a version of telephone. One person says “hotmail uses recycled spamtraps” someone else repeats “big ISPs use recycled spamtraps” then then third person says “all ISPs use recycled spamtraps.” People try and correct this type of misinformation all the time but sometimes it’s hard to clarify.
So show up to our session and let Ken lob questions at me, lob some of your own and we can see what myths we can clear up.

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