Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 11 of July , 2008 at 5:24 pm Leave a comment
Brand name spam is when an email marketer uses a big name brand to get past the spam filters. While this doesn`t always work, seeing a subject line with “Lowe`s” or “Wal-Mart” in it tends to grab people`s attention. But is it a good way to go?
Spam is spam, no matter how you get it into the inbox and just because you use a special brand name to ensure that it is going to get past the spam filter doesn`t mean you`ll necessarily get more sales. In fact, it could ruin your reputation.
You don`t use techniques like this? Excellent, but that doesn`t mean they can`t be sneaking in anyway. If you sell solo ads and ad space, make sure you check what people are trying to run in your email newsletter. Even if the solo ad has nothing to do with you, this could destroy what people think of you and in email marketing, that could mean losing everything.
Brand name spam is still spam, so keep an eye out for it and be sure not to mislead your readers with this type of headline.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 26 of June , 2008 at 4:10 pm Leave a comment
There isn´t anything that an email marketer fears more than being labeled spam. But sometimes, even when your email newsletter makes it through the filter, people will consider it spam and click delete and unsubscribe in the blink of an eye. There are a few phrases that really set off alarms for readers and that are best to avoid.
“The price could go up at any minute! “This may be a handy tactic to pressure people into buying right now, but the fact is that most readers have caught on to the fact that most internet marketers don´t really change those prices and they will be more annoyed at the attempt to pressure them than anything.
“Late breaking news, Act Now!” This just lets your readers know that you are going to push them to buy something right this second and in many cases, they aren´t interested.
“I´ve got a very special deal for you.” When this appears in the regular email content of a trusted email marketer, it has value, but if you tend to bombard your subscribers with a lot of ads, this will just make them sigh and hit delete.
Aggressive email marketing campaigns can cause a lot of tension and unsubscribes that are very bad for your email marketing business. While getting through the spam filter is definitely a consideration, remember that your audience also has to approve your email content and not just the spam filter.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 28 of May , 2008 at 3:53 pm Leave a comment
Even if you have spam free email newsletters, that doesn´t mean they won´t get caught by those tricky spam filters. There´s no one little thing that will get your emails kicked to the curb by an overzealous spam filter, but you should be aware that most spam filters count points accumulated by small errors and if your email has too many points against it, it gets dumped in the spam box.
According to Robin Good, there are quite a few checkpoints that affect whether or not your email newsletter will end up being labeled as spam.
Some of the most popular among these spam filters, such as SpamAssassin, SpamCombat or SpamProbe are designed to look for specific patterns in your email messages and to assign “spamming points” to them when they encounter such pre-defined patterns. These patterns or spam-signatures may actually include anything from the specific words you use in the Subject line of your newsletter to the actual words inside the text, specific phrases, images, to the format (HTML or text-only) you may have chosen for the delivery of your newsletter, and even to the type of colors you may have used.
He goes on to list many of the areas that spam filters are looking at and gives tips on how to get legitimate emails into the inbox where they belong. Some of the things that could be causing your email newsletter to lose points include changing the color and font of your text within the email, using HTML only newsletters, capitalization in the wrong places and using blind carbon copy, among a variety of other things.
Being aware of what could be tripping your email up in the spam filter is a good start to preventing problems. You can make sure that your emails are able to pass the test and actually be read by your subscribers.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 25 of April , 2008 at 5:19 pm Leave a comment
It´s hard to remember that spam filters were originally built to protect people from spam and junk mail, especially when your perfectly legit email newsletter is getting caught up in them! But the truth is that without spam filters, we´d be in a lot worse shape than we currently are.
Remembering that spam filters are really a good thing is the best way to avoid being resentful. Keep in mind that they are there to prevent the entrance of huge amounts of junk emails. If this were not the case, we´d be innundated with junk, but you´ll find that most spam is caught by these spam filters.
So, how is this good for email marketers? Well, it´s a great way to ensure that your readers are still reading emails! Too much spam and they will start delete anything they don´t recognize, which is definitely a bad thing for email marketers. So, the next time you´re feeling frustrated with spam filters, just remember that without them, you´d have a lot better chance of being deleted.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 9 of April , 2008 at 4:42 pm Leave a comment
The boon of all email marketers is the spam filter. It can gobble up your best email newsletters and destroy your top offers before they ever reach your subscribers. Even if they opted in to your email list, there´s no guarantee that your emails will get through to their inbox.
However, if your subscribers whitelist you, you are automatically granted that special access, without having to deal with spam filters. Whitelisting is a pretty simple process, the subscriber just has to add your email address to their list of accepted emails and your email newsletter will bypass the spam filter completely.
Spam filters are meant to weed out the bad emails from the good, but since they aren´t able to actually judge the email content, spam filters tend to catch some of the good emails, too. Don´t let yours be one of them, ask your subscribers to whitelist you.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 18 of March , 2008 at 8:18 pm Comments (1)
Spam filters are an email marketer´s worst nightmare. A nasty filter can grab your best email newsletter and toss it out into the cold where no one will ever see it. This is obviously not very conducive to email marketing, so you really need to skip that spam filter and get into the inbox, where your subscribers can see you.
How to Skip the Spam Filter
Get whitelisted. If you are on someone´s email list, the spam filter will skip your email completely, so it is well worth asking your subscriber to do this and give them instructions on how to do so.
Avoid spam words. Certain words will set off the spam filter. Things like “free” “buy now” and “limited time offer” tend to get flagged as potential spam.
Never use All Caps. This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. This almost always automatically results in being sent to the spam folder, so stay far far away from All Caps, even if it´s just for a couple of words.
Spam filters might be nasty, but if you are careful, you can usually get past them. Don´t forget that spam filters aren´t really out to get you, they are specifically designed to look for spam and if that´s what your email newsletter looks like to the filter, it will get chewed up and spit out!
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 17 of February , 2008 at 5:27 pm Leave a comment
The number of email marketing newsletters that actually get read these days is pretty low. Between spam filters and overloaded inboxes, people are missing out on a lot of their emails. You want your email newsletter to get through not just the spam filter, but also the automatic radar that people have for junk emails.
Email marketing presents a bit of a challenge in that you are often trying to sell something. If your newsletter looks too salesy, many people will delete it, so you want to not only use techniques that will help you avoid spam filters, but which will also entice people to unhighlight you when doing mass deletes.
To get your email newsletter read and not marked at spam, you will have to work a bit harder. Offering real content, rather than a sales letter in disguise will help keep your readers interested in your. Make sure that the From line has your name in it, rather than your organization, this is the best way to get people to recognize your emails and keep you out of the spam box.
The majority of people, when they sign up for your email marketing newsletter, will read the first or second emails, especially if you are giving them something for free. Make these first few emails of the highest quality, no sales and lots of content and useful information and you´ll find that these people will consistently open your email newsletters more often.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 4 of January , 2008 at 8:23 am Leave a comment
Every email marketer dreads the spam filter, but sometimes that isn´t your worst enemy. Have you ever considered the fact that your readers might click that spam button right beside the delete? It happens and while there may be a few reasons why they do so, the main one is to stop receiving your emails. They may know you aren´t spamming them, but are sick of deleting your email newsletters . . . the “Mark as Spam” button is just fast and easy.
You might be asking yourself why readers wouldn´t simply unsubscribe and the fact of the matter is that it takes time to unsubscribe. People don´t want to click and type and click again just to stop receiving an email, so they label it spam and the spam filter will grab it from then on.
If your email newsletter doesn´t have a simple, one-step unsubscribe method that is clearly outlined in your email newsletter, it´s possible that you are being labeled as spam. To avoid this problem, stay away from auto responders that require multiple steps to unsubscribe . . . and never, ever make it a requirement to log into their account to delete it, this is a guaranteed method of getting that Spam label.
No email marketer wants to be labeled as spam, but if you make it difficult to unsubscribe from your email newsletter, you are really asking for it. So, make your unsubscribe process easy and you´ll be rewarded with less clicks on the dreaded spam button.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 30 of December , 2007 at 10:45 pm Leave a comment
Spam filters are a great idea . . . until they block your emails from getting through to your subscribers. You may know that your email newsletters are not spam, but that doesn´t mean the filter does. Since it´s pretty hard to reason with a spam filter, you need to take extra care with your email newsletters, to make sure they don´t get caught up.
Keeping your email plain is possibly one of the best techniques for avoiding being mislabeled. Filters are designed to get rid of commercial letters, often more personal sounding emails are not spam, so they tend to get through easier.
Most email marketers know by now that keeping certain words out of the email content and watching your subject line is the best way to make sure the spam filter doesn´t cut out emails that are not spam. However, there are a few lesser known techniques that can also keep you in the clear.
For example, making sure that you use a white background with black text can be a big help. The majority of personal emails are black and white. Also, using the person´s name can alert a spam filter that your email newsletter is not spam. One last technique is to watch the “From” field. Using anything with the word “sales” in the email address could cause your email to be trashed.
Keeping these techniques in mind and being careful to craft your email newsletter so it is obviously not spam will help get more of your content through to your subscribers. And that, in the end, is really what matters.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 29 of October , 2007 at 10:32 am Leave a comment
In order to reach your subscribers, your email has to get past the dreaded spam filter. While a spam filter can be very useful in keeping ads for Viagra out of the inbox, it isn’t foolproof. There are precautions you can take to make sure that your newsletter gets through to your subscriber’s inbox.
Certain words tend to trigger the spam filter, so you are better off avoiding these. Words that are commonly associated with spam include free, limited time, performance, buy now, and spam. Most spam filters look at the content of an email, as well as the subject line, so it’s a good idea to eliminate spammy words and phrases from the entire newsletter.
Asking your subscribers to add you to their email list is the best way to ensure that you get into their inbox. Since they may not bother doing this, you might want to try offering a bonus that will arrive in a later email and tell them, “Make sure you receive this free report by adding companyname@emailaddress.com to your address book”.
Excessive punctuation, particularly in the subject line, will also trigger spam filters. Avoid using any exclamation points in the subject line and keep them to a minimum inside the email. Using three or four question marks or exclamation points is a sure way to get your email sent straight to the black hole of the spam folder.
One last thing to avoid is all caps. Even one word in all caps is enough to cause a spam filter to remove you from the inbox. If you want to make a point, do it with small letters instead. Using these tips, you should be able to avoid complaints about your content being spam and keep those spam filters happy.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 13 of October , 2007 at 8:20 am Leave a comment
Continuing from the previous two posts about the CAN-SPAM Act, Section 6 of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 explicitly makes it unlawful for any business to violate the spam laws even if they are not themselves actively using e-mail marketing to promote their businesses.
The act explicitly states:
(a) IN GENERAL- It is unlawful for a person to promote, or allow the promotion of, that person’s trade or business, or goods, products, property, or services sold, offered for sale, leased or offered for lease, or otherwise made available through that trade or business, in a commercial electronic mail message the transmission of which is in violation of section 5(a)(1) if that person–
(1) knows, or should have known in the ordinary course of that person’s trade or business, that the goods, products, property, or services sold, offered for sale, leased or offered for lease, or otherwise made available through that trade or business were being promoted in such a message;
(2) received or expected to receive an economic benefit from such promotion; and
(3) took no reasonable action–
(A) to prevent the transmission; or
(B) to detect the transmission and report it to the Commission.
In other words, if you knew of the e-mail transmissions promoting your business and expected to profit from that without taking reasonable actions to stop the e-mail transmissions, then you are guilty of spam. This law is in place to stop people from hiring third parties to do their dirty work. Just because someone else is doing it for you - it could even be a sister or brother doing it for free - then that doesn’t mean you aren’t liable. It’s your business; you are responsible.
Bottom line: Don’t authorize spam for your business at all. Period.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 12 of October , 2007 at 8:06 am Comments (1)
Yesterday, we discussed Section 4 of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Today, I want to discuss Section 5. Some of the prohibitions included in the Act are:
- Misleading or false information in an e-mail header
- Deceptive subject headings
- Absence of return address or comparable mechanism
- Transmission of commercial e-mail after being rejected
- Non-inclusion of opt-out process, identifying information, and physical address
Of course, just looking at these points out of context lends nothing to the discussion on e-mail spam. A little elaboration is necessary. Below is a short explanation of each bullet point. For a fuller treatment on the prohibitions in e-mail spam, see the Act in its entirety here.
The Prohibitions On E-mail Spam Outlined
Header - Every commercial e-mail header must contain truthful information. You can’t mislead people by telling them your e-mail is about one thing and make it be about something else.
Subject headings - Same applies. Do not deceive.
Return address - You must include a return e-mail address or hyperlink to a website within your e-mail and it must be conspicuously visible.
Rejections - If someone says they don’t want to receive further communications from you then you can’t send them more e-mails.
Opt-out - Within your e-mail you must include a way for people to opt-out of your e-mail transmissions. You must also conspicuously let people know that your e-mail is an advertisement or solicitation. You must also include a valid physical address of the person sending the e-mail.
This is by no means a comprehensive treatment of e-mail spam, but it does give you an idea of how you should treat your e-mail marketing campaigns and to let you know what you can and cannot do. I highly encourage you to read the CAN-SPAM Act on your own to get a better understanding of these issues.
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Category: Not Spam
Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 11 of October , 2007 at 8:55 am Comments (1)
CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. The Act was passed in 2003 to combat exactly what the title says, unsolicited porn and marketing e-mails.
The key word there is unsolicited. The idea is to stop, or limit, the number of e-mails sent to people with blatant marketing messages and pornographic images.
The Act, as it is written, is quote long and I won’t cover every detail of it here. But I do want to discuss the meet of the Act - what you can and can’t do.
The part of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that deals with what you can’t do in email marketing is Section 4. Among the prohibitions in this section of the the CAN-SPAM Act are:
- Sending commercial email through an unauthorized computer
- Deceiving recipients of email regarding the origin of commercial messages
- Including material falsehoods in the header of commercial email messages
- Falsifying the identity of the registrant of five or more e-mail accounts or two or more domain names from which commercial email messages are sent and sending unsolicited commercial email from any of those accounts
- Falsifying a successorship to five or more IP addresses and sending unsolicited commercial email from those addresses
So you can see there are some broad interpretations with regard to these prohibitions. They’re actually pretty lenient. These are not all the prohibitions in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. These are simply the prohibitions found in Section 4 of the Act. Tomorrow I’ll cover more prohibitions and we’ll really get to the heart of what you should do with your commercial email.
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Category: Not Spam
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