content filters
You’ve seen the advice: “Just avoid these 18 spam trigger words and always get to the inbox!” I’ve been doing this a long time and somebody new pops up with guidance like this a few times a year, and it’s just absolute bullshit, and it’s been bullshit for years.Spam filters don’t work that way. They are not so simplistic that just a word or two from a static list are going to tank your inbox placement.Content does matter, to some degree, yes. Meaning that yes, what you say or include in your email messages can have an impact on inbox placement. But as far as ranking how important content is, it is third, usually a distant third place, behind IP and domain sending reputation.Don’t believe me? Here’s Magan Le from Litmus with “Why spam trigger words are a thing of the past,” where she sums it up nicely.Truth be told
So, you read my blog post about how content still matters (even if it takes a back seat to IP and domain reputation). And you’ve done the neutral content test. And you see that you’ve got a probably content issue. Now what? Here’s what.In a recent entry for Kickbox’s Email Deliverability Unfiltered Series, Jennifer Nespola Lantz compiled a whole list of helpful content-related deliverability considerations, and included her own. You really should check it out. In particular, Mary Youngblood and Matthew Vernhout, and the others provide some very prescriptive guidance on what to check for in your content when trying to identify and fix content-related deliverability problems.Keep in mind that when solving problems, it can be a bit of an arms race. (And the best way to win this kind of arms race is not to play.) The goal (and my desire) is not to teach you to stay “one…
Your IP reputation is important. Your domain reputation is important. Your content is important, too.No, really.Well, okay. Of the three, content is third in the ranking. Sometimes a distant third. But it is on the list, and rightly so. Sometimes we here in deliverability land talk about how content doesn’t matter – but that’s not quite correct. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we’re guilty of explaining things too simplistically. Reputation and deliverability success are MOSTLY driven by reputation and reputation is MOSTLY driven by (indirect ISP measures of) permission. Since ISP spam filters can’t really read permission directly, they rely on other signals to try to back into it. And content filtering is a tiny little part of that; trying to infer that a sender is bad because their mail includes content fingerprints or hallmarks that are often found in unsolicited and unwanted mail. Thus, content matters.Here’s…
I was just testing an email for a friend of a friend. Part of that testing involved running the email through my KBXSCORE checker. It came back with very few issues; most of the header bits are configured properly and the email is fully authenticated.But I had a weirdly higher-than-expected SpamAssassin score, and when I looked at what rule caused the score to spike, it was this one: PDS_OTHER_BAD_TLD. This particular SpamAssassin rule is meant to warn users of “untrustworthy TLDs” (top level domains) like, for example, .click. Meaning that the makers of SpamAssassin believe that linking to a “dot click” domain is a spam sign.But this email didn’t link to a “dot click” domain. Or did it? I couldn’t see it at first, but then I went through the text version with a fine tooth comb and here’s what I saw (slightly redacted):Thank you for subscribing to receive emails from…