Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, February, 2006

Did you know that 22 percent of nonspam e-mail doesn't get delivered? That means two e-mails lost for every nine sent out. It's because the spammers have killed e-mail both by burying the real stuff and by causing most ISPs to filter the mail.

We've already talked about the From and Subject lines. The third key in writing e-mails that get opened is to send e-mails that don't get caught in spamcatcher filters--because if you want your post to be opened, it has to be seen. If the filters grab it, your recipient may not ever have the chance to see it.

In the above paragraph, I reworded two bits to avoid that trap. I said "not ever" because the one-word version that begins with "n" and ends with "ever" is one of the trigger words. So are the words you get if you drop the first letter off "where" or "know." And I did the word that begins with "sp" and ends with "catcher" as one word, because the first four letters would ring a filter bell.

And you may have wondered why you sometimes see spaces in the middle of words in my newsletters--it's to avoid triggering these robots' appetite for e-mail.

Learn to phrase things differently. Instead of the word that begins "fr" and continues "ee," for instance, I might say "no-cost," "without charge," etc. For me, writing to beat the filters has become automatic (and given that I write about marketing and pro fit, it's a challenge). I still run my stuff through a checker, and there will be a few items that I miss, but even my first draft scores are pretty low.

Most filters will rank a piece of mail, and those above a certain score will be blocked entirely or held for review before delivery. So, typically, you can have a few of the filter hooks but not too many.

In addition to word traps, some filters are set for format traps. Fortunately, those are easy to avoid--if you know what they are. This isn't a complete list, but it'll get you started:
* Html formats (see next month for a full explanation)
* Strings of all-capital letters (this is why I am violating grammar and not capitalizing every letter of Html)
* Multiple exclamation points and/or dollar signs
* Documents that are excessively long (yes, I'm guilty, I confess)
* Double-high priority flag

OK, so how do you know? Run it through at least one of these:
http://www.ezinecheck.com/check.html (this is the one I use most often, because it's extremely easy to use and tells you the results right away--but it flags fewer words than some others)
http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/ (follow the instructions *exactly*--and you'll get a report by e-mail within a few hours)
http://www.lyris.com/resources/contentchecker/ (another one that e-mails the report)

Next month, we'll finish out the e-mail series by looking at the plusses and minuses of Html-mail versus plain text

Oh, and if you want the reference for that 22 percent "nixie" figure: http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/email/article.php/3496361

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.