When you prepare your e-mail to blast your business offers to “your list” you should write it so that it will pass the average SPAM filters the email will encounter during its delivery.  Your delivery statistics might improve significantly.

There are many tools available. Some free, some at a small cost. Tried some out but I believe more in doing an actual “on the spot test”.

I’m using Outlook as my e-mail client, other clients might differ.

I write my e-mail I intend to mail out. Then mail it to one or more of my secondary email accounts. Some include yahoo and msn accounts.

If you don’t receive your own e-mail, you know for sure you will have a poor delivery. But even if you did receive it, others might not. It depends on individual spam settings, spam filters your host might apply, etc.

So right click on your own e-mail you received back. You see information on the e-mail including a scroll box named “Internet Headers”. It gives a lot of information on the e-mail transmission.

Depending on the client you are using, scroll down to the bottom and in you might find :information what says:

MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam,

SpamAssassin (not cached,score=-0.531, required 5, BAYES_00 -2.60, HTML_MESSAGE 0.00, MIME_HTML_ONLY 1.46, SARE_SPEC_LEO_LINE03f 0.61, SPF_HELO_PASS -0.00,

One of the most common SpamCheck is done by SpamAssassin. If your score exceed 5.0 you better start rewriting your message. I typically rewrite any message which has a score over 3.0

SpamAsassin updates their Spam criteria  regular. So always check your e-mail just before you “blast” to your e-mail list.

By doing this you learn very quickly what you can write or shouldn’t write.  I also found out that any .biz domain gets an higher spam score. A domain name using “mlm” in the name is not so good either. Sometimes the domain you link to in your e-mail is “black” listed. Avoid that!

There is more information. See if “X-Spam-Status: No” is listed. If you see instead of “No” a range of “sssssss” then you might start rewriting as well if you see more then three.

Good Luck!

Fred Lotgering

LotCon Biz Solutions