Nowadays most mail servers have built-in antispam filters; they are quite smart, but sometimes they fail and delete (or mark as spam and redirect to some “spam” folder) perfectly legal messages; this is a common problem with Hotmail and other very popular free mail services. If you feel a lot of your messages are filtered out and not delivered, here are some basic rules to avoid being named a spammer by mistake:
- Always include plain text: “personal” e-mail messages, even if written using HTML format, always include a plain text part. If a plain text part is missing, most antispam filters become suspicious. When you finish composing your message, use SendBlaster’s “Text from HTML” button to automatically create a plain text part from HTML.
- Most of your message must be text; avoid including large images. Once again, antispam filters become suspicious when the image / text ratio is too high.
- Don’t over-attach: attachments should only be used in small, personal lists; if you are publishing a newsletter, upload files on your website and use links instead (your subscribers will be happier too).
- Avoid risky words that are commonly used by spammers and constantly flooding your mailbox.
- Switch to Smtp: While Direct Send mode is very useful in many situations, unfortunately nowadays a lot of mail server refuse direct delivery in order to prevent spam. You should better use Smtp when you are mailing a large amount of recipients.
- Always check the SPAM score of your email content, using the included SPAM Test in message editor section, before sending to get a spam rate and understand if the mailservers will tag as SPAM blocking your email.