This statement is taken for the rule by many email marketers. Despite of a magic power of this word that prompts the recipient to immediately act on your email, it’s generally believed that "free" is a pure spam word. Yes, there is a truth behind this. Every other spam message contains the word "free". But what is the most important is the environment this word is used in, i.e. the whole phrase with the word "free" matters.

Let’s look how two popular spam content filters – Spam Assassin and MS Outlook 2000 – work and handle your emails.

Spam Assassin, one of the main “test” spam filters, assigns points – positive and negative – to the message content and HTML code. Positive points mean potential spam, negative points mean the message content and code are not generally used by spammers. The score is calculated and if it exceeds a certain level, the message is filtered as spam. It’s about the Spam Assassin user to determine the level at which emails are filtered. It is generally believed that most companies/ISPs use a total score of around 10, but that some may go as low as 4.

In the Spam Assassin the phrases with the word "free" do get fairly high scores – 1 and higher. But the phrases commonly used in legitimate emails such as “free report”, "free download", "free upgrade", “free e-book” and “free newsletter” are not affected.

Unlike the Spam Assassin, MS Outlook 2000 Junk E-mail Filter uses a pass/fail method. It looks for “junk and adult” content in the message and directs suspicious messages to the Outlook’s Deleted Items folder. The common things that trigger the filter are the use of an exclamation point and the word "free" in the message Subject line.

The bottom line: Use the word "free" in your email newsletters wisely and test, test and test your message before sending it to the whole list.

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If the email messages are being mistaken by AOL as unsolicited commercial email, and are therefore being blocked, you will need to edit your personal spam settings.

Edit Your Spam Settings

You can edit your spam settings a number of ways. You can allow email from all senders, restrict senders to a list that you design, block certain domains… even turn AOL’s mail filtering off altogether! We suggest familiarizing yourself with AOL’s mail filtering system and make the best choices for you.

If your mail controls are set to use a custom filter list, you will need to add the sender’s domain (for example, glocksoft.com) to your list of accepted domains.

If your mail controls are set to only accept from "people you know", you will need to add the sender’s email address (for example, noreply@glocksoft.com) to your address book.

Ensure AOL Doesn’t Delete Your Mail

AOL is now either filtering email they consider to be spam into a "Spam Folder" or deleting it completely. Ensure that AOL doesn’t delete your mail by following these instructions:

Read more on I am an AOL User and I Can’t Receive Emails…

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You can try the following instructions, but really your best bet is to re-register with a non-Hotmail email address. Hotmail won’t allow companies to email you unless they pay for the privilege (yes, they want people to pay money to send Hotmail members email).

But if you really want to try to receive the emails at your Hotmail email account, these instructions are supposed to work:

Read more on I am a HOTMAIL User and I Can’t Receive Emails…

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