Knowledgebase

More and more Free email services are introducing (for want of a better phrase) over sensitive spam filters. The idea of this article is to help you to construct your newsletters to make sure they are not flagged as spam, and to guard you against spam complaints.

Basic things ALL newsletters should include

1. An un-subscribe link.
As per our terms of service ALL newsletters sent from our servers MUST contain a clickable unsubscribe link whereby a user can immediately remove themselves from your mailing list should they wish to do so.

2. A disclaimer

You can copy and paste this one if you wish It is carefully worded so that it does not trigger spam filters.

This newsletter is double opt in. Your email address {their Email} was entered at our site and a confirmation link was clicked in a verification email we sent to you when you joined.

{Your Site Name} Is strictly against unsolicited email. Should you no longer wish to receive these mailings please click the link below to unsubscribe yourself from our list."

{unsubscribe link}

We recommend you place this information at the TOP of your newsletter. It covers you against spam complaints.

3. A reply to email address

This should be featured clearly in the email.

4. Your main website address

No need to explain this

If you really want to do things correctly, here are the basic required parts to a newsletter to make it RFC compliant (the internet standard for legitimate email)

    * Persons transmitting mail from must not do anything that tries to hide, forge or misrepresent the sender of the e-mail and sending site of the e-mail.

    * Bulk mailings must specifically state how the members' e-mail addresses were obtained and must indicate the frequency of the mailing.

    * Bulk mailings should contain simple and obvious unsubscribe mechanisms. We recommend that this be in the form of a working link to a one-click unsubscribe system; however, a valid "reply to:" address may be used instead.

    * All subscription based e-mail must have valid, non-electronic, contact information for the sending organization in the text of each e-mail including phone number and a physical mailing address.

Some webmasters do not clearly show this information. Personally we have always showed our physical address and telephone number and have never had either stalkers or crank calls (smile)

HTML or Text newsletters??

This is down to choice we personally send plain text newsletters. The reason being that spammers use images in html emails to confirm that email adresses exist. Therefore some free email providers can be sensitive to too many images in an email. Also images in emails are included as attachments with the email which can flag your newsletter as a potential virus.

We recommend sending your newsletters in plain text. If you want to include images of your latest products then we suggest you build a html copy of your newsletter on your site and include a link to it in the emails.

Sending text emails also ensures that ALL your subscribers can read them.

A great way to bypass many over sensitive filters is to publish  your newsletter online then send an email like:

Hi Name,

Our latest newsletter is now available click the link below to view it

link here

Your name

(with the dislaimer first of course)

 
Another useful tip is use a program like Filter Buster to check your emails for words spam filters see as trigger words. Avoiding using such words will also help your newsletter get through.
 

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