Testing against spam filters
"Janet Attard" <attard_at_businessknowhow.com> wrote:
> Time alone isn't the only influencing factor, either. The subject
> line makes a tremendous difference in how many and how fast they
> open the email. And unfortunately, ridiculous spam filters that
> either block all mail coming from blocks of IP addresses, or that
> look at words in an email and mark email as spam based on some
> numerical or other system can drastically change results. Sending
> an html newsletter that discusses email marketing, increasing your
> sales and controlling spam all in the same newsletter, along
> with a link to opt-out - all normal subjects for a business newsletter
> [sigh] - can get a newsletter blocked or marked as spam, so fewer get
> read.
If you're able to and it's warranted I suggest considering testing against
spam filters before sending out to the entire subscriber base. I run the
anti-spam software Spamassassin on our servers and instruct my clients to
send their newsletters to their own email account which we host to see which
Spamassassin rules are matched in order to determine if the email should be
tweaked before sending to the entire subscriber base. I also advise using a
combination of your own accounts at hotmail, yahoo, msn and aol and/or
having subscribers/peers willing to let you send your newsletters to them to
test against their anti-spam filters so you can tweak if necessary.
--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/
Received on Tue Jul 29 2003 - 09:20:22 CDT
