Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by admin
Most commercial e-mail messages are sent in HTML or a multipart format and include images: logos, header images, product pictures or sender’s photos. Many all e-mail marketers host images on a web server and specify the path to them in the message. To load the images, a call is made back to the hosting server. Many ISPs and some e-mail clients block this call. This is done primarily for security reasons. Using image blocking capabilities people can prohibit adult images from loading and prevent spammers from knowing if the message was opened.
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Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by admin
The recipients will be viewing your email newsletter in different email applications which render HTML email differently. For this reason, you need to test your email first and make sure it works in as many different email applications as possible. There are many email applications out there and they all render HTML email in different sometimes unpredictable ways. Do you need to test every single newsletter across every single application, every single time you send? No. Just setup a good, simple, foolproof template and test it as much as possible. In the future all you’ll need to do is to vary the content. It really helps to setup a test computer (or two) in your office. If it’s not possible, send the email to a few friends or office-mates. Just ask them to let you know if anything looks "off" or broken to them.
In the table below we summarize the particularities of most popular email clients. Knowing common issues of various email applications will help you find the optimal HTML design so that you email newsletter is displayed in the suitable way for all the subscribers.
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Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by admin
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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Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by admin
Along with the ISP spam filtering systems, people can use anti-spam filters in their email clients to protect against unsolicited emails. In the table below we summarized the information about anti-spam filters in most popular email applications and web-based email services.
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