Creative Deliverability

The basics of avoiding the junk folder in email design

DeliveraWhat?

Deliverability:The Abilityto deliverbulk emailinto the inbox

Reputation InboxPlacement JunkFolder domain OptOut

Engagement SpammyKeywords ISP SpamTrap domain prefix email-address SenderScore

Image-to-text-ratio

Other Content Deliverability Words

• Spammers sent spam• Filters learned to read junked keywords

• Spammers sent spam in images• Filters junked image only emails

• Spammers sent images and normal text• Filters required multiple images

• Spammers split the images up• Filters asked for more text than images

• Spammers added even more text• Inboxes blocked images

Image blocking

Junk / Content Filters: Avoiding the JunkFolder

• Includes Subject Line and “From Name”

• Outlook: yes or no, not self learning

• Spam Assassin: explained rules

• Most large consumer ISPs learn

• Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL etc

• Reputation decides leniency

• Image to text ratio• At least: 60% text / At most: 40% images• SpamAssassin can count!

• HTML and plain text different• SpamAssassin can read!

• No plain text version• Spammy Keywords/Phrases• Obfuscation• Spammy Keywords changed

• Not enough images• At least 3, not all touching

• Too many consecutive consonants in address

Spam Assassin Rules Broken

• Evolved in the same way for the same reasons

• Punctuation in subject lines: Outlook

• Plain text links: new line, tracked/not

• Colourfull links: Gmail (reputation)

• Badly coded HTML - all of them (reputation)

• Javascript: All of them

• Form code: most of them (reputation)

The rest of the Inboxes

Reputation - Deliverability Credit Rating

• Only important Since Credit Crunch

• Have DDs & Pay your credit cardbefore asking for mortgage

Server User Bad User Good

Non-existing users Marked as Spam Mark as not spam

Zombie users Deletedwithout opening Opens (over time)

Too many too fast Mark as read without opening Replies

Spam Traps Straight to Junk Forwarding

• Content filter leniency

• Speed and volume of acceptance

• Mainly the large ISPs

• 60% text vs 40% images• Text size does not count (12px)

• At least 3 images not all touching • Always have a plaint text version• Plain text links on a new line• Good quality & fairly complex HTML

• Test sending speeds• Test sending times• A/B Content Testing• Intelligent Time Sending• Engagement Filtering (Open Reach)• Test, Test, Test, always be testing

Takeawaysandy thorpe

deliverabilty & compliance manager

Linkedin/andythorpe

@captaininbox