If you ever wondered why your e-mail went to spam, here are some hints:
Email Subject Lines Words that trigger Spam filters
via Marketing Technology Blog
“Here are the rules SpamAssassin utilizes with words in the subject line:
The subject line is blank (Thanks Alan!)
The subject contains the words alert, response, assistance, proposal, reply, warning, notification, greeting, matter, credited, owe, indebted, debt, obligation or reactivation… or misspellings of those words.
The subject line contains the month abbreviated (example: May)
The subject line contains the words cialis, levitra, soma, valium or xanax.
The subject line begins with “Re: new”
The subject line contains “a bigger”
The subject line contains “approves you” or “approved”
The subject line contains “at no cost”
The subject line contains “security measures”
The subject line contains “cheap”
The subject line contains “low rates”
The subject line contains the words “as seen”.
The subject line begins with a dollar sign ($) or spammy looking monetary reference.
The subject line contains the words “your bills”.
The subject line contains the words “your family”.
The subject line contains the words “no prescription” or “online pharmaceutical”.
The subject line starts with lose, “weight loss”, or talks about losing weight or pounds.
The subject line starts with buy or buying.
The subject says something bad about teens.
The subject line starts with “Do you dream”, “Do you have”, “Do you want”, “Do you love”, etc.
The subject line is ALL CAPITALS.
The subject line contains the first part of the email address (example: subject contains “Dave” and the email is addressed to [email protected]).
The subject line contains sexually-explicit content.
The subject line attempts to obfuscate or misspell words. (example: c1alis, x@nax)
The subject line contains an English or Japanese UCE code.
The subject line contains Korean unsolicited email tag.”
Read more: http://www.marketingtechblog.com/email-marketing/subject-line-words-spam/#ixzz1MqJ9Ukbb
Keep up the good fight!
Stephen
3 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
An interesting list of things to avoid – thanks for posting.
I have run an Australian birding email list for some years, and whenever I see a post about one of these species, I get ready for the flood of mail server bounces:
Boobies (e.g. Brown Booby, the worst offender) are tropical seabirds.
Tits (Great Tit gets the most rejections, but Blue Tit and Penduline Tit have had their share) are British birds, but occasionally get a mention downunder.
By far the biggest impact was the Zealand cormorant species, the Great Shag.
It isn’t just spam filters that can cause inconvenience. A few years ago, one of my students tried to do an internet search on Woodpeckers for his project for our unit on Habitats. He was unable to get any information on them because all the relevant sites listed by the search engine were blocked by the School Board’s Censorship filter. He had to switch topics to another animal found in the habitat he selected in order to complete the project.
Always great to give ideas on subject lines Stephen. Spam Filters the bane of all email marketers. Kurt