Don't Let Your E-mails Get Filtered Out -- A Guide to Avoid Spam Filters

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Homepage --> Don't Let Your E-mails Get Filtered Out -- A Guide to Avoid Spam Filters

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Don't Let Your E-mails Get Filtered Out -- A Guide to Avoid Spam Filters

Colleague and friend Barbara Thomas, Director of Marketing at TruSecure Corp. in Herndon, VA, offers this tip to e-mail copywriters:

"I wanted to share this information that I have been using as we write our e-mail letters at our company," Barbara said. "We follow these guidelines to assure as many of our e-mails are delivered as possible. Thought it might be helpful to you. These are Microsoft Outlooks suggested filters that many other email programs use as well. (Not all e-mail filtering lists are the same.)"

Microsoft Junk E-Mail Filter Readme:

The Junk and Adult Content filters work by looking for key words. This file is a description of exactly which words the filter looks for and where the filter looks for them.

Junk E-mail Filter

First 8 characters of From are digits
Subject contains "advertisement"
Body contains "money back "
Body contains "cards accepted"
Body contains "removal instructions"
Body contains "extra income"
Subject contains "!" AND Subject contains "$"
Subject contains "!" AND Subject contains "free"
Body contains ",000" AND Body contains "!!" AND Body contains "$"
Body contains "Dear friend"
Body contains "for free?"
Body contains "for free!"
Body contains "Guarantee" AND (Body contains "satisfaction" OR Body contains
"absolute")
Body contains "more info " AND Body contains "visit " AND Body contains "$"
Body contains "SPECIAL PROMOTION"
Body contains "one-time mail"
Subject contains "$$"
Body contains "$$$"
Body contains "order today"
Body contains "order now!"
Body contains "money-back guarantee"
Body contains "100% satisfied"
To contains "friend@"
To contains "public@"
To contains "success@"
>From contains "sales@"
>From contains "success."
>From contains "success@"
>From contains "mail@"
>From contains "@public"
>From contains "@savvy"
>From contains "profits@"
>From contains "hello@"
Body contains " mlm"
Body contains "@mlm"
Body contains "///////////////"
Body contains "check or money order"

Note that many of these phrases are typically used in fundraising e-mails, such as "(credit) cards accepted", "check or money order", or "Dear Friend".

There is also an "Adult Content Filter" that looks for such phrases as:

Subject contains " xxx"
Subject contains "over 18"
Subject contains "over 21"
Subject contains "adult s"
Subject contains "adults only"
Subject contains "be 18"
Subject contains "18+"
Body contains "over 18"
Body contains "over 21"
Body contains "must be 18"
Body contains "adults only"
Body contains "adult web"
Body contains "must be 21"
Body contains "adult en"
Body contains "18+"
Subject contains "erotic"
Subject contains "adult en"
Subject contains " sex"
Body contains " xxx "
Body contains " xxx!"
Subject contains "free" AND Subject contains "adult"
Subject contains "free" AND Subject contains "sex"

August 2002