How to not be mistaken for spam - Optimizing your code

March 21st, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

In a perfect world - only spam would make it in the junk folder. However, this is not the world we live in, and unless you are willing to dish out big dollars for an added deliverability service, you can’t really know if your emails are landing in the inbox. However, what you can do is take a proactive approach to avoiding common spam filters. Aside from the obvious word triggers, you can optimize your HTML coding to avoid triggers.

I found this comprehensive list of HTML coding triggers for email stashed deep inside my portfolio… I certainly didn’t write the list - but I’m not sure who did, so if you know who deserves credit, please let me know!

Of course if you don’t follow everything on the list, it doesn’t mean you will won’t make it to people’s inboxes - but the more you are able to optimize, the better your chances of avoiding filters.

Coding Triggers

Java Script - Do not use java script. Most filters block all messages that contain Java script. Unethical senders have been known to exploit Java script to transmit viruses and other malicious code.
Style Sheets - Do not use Style Sheets. Various email readers interpret style sheets differently. This may cause problems in the way your message is displayed to recipients. Note: If you are absolutely in love with the look and feel of style sheets, you can still do some inline CSS, but it will still create rendering problems in some email clients (Especially Lotus Notes)
Unbalanced “body” and “html” tags - Anytime you have an opening tag you need to have a corresponding closing tag.
Missing “table” closing tags
“tbody” tags - Removing all the tbody tags has no effect on the appearance of the message. They are primarily used in web page design and filters look at them as sloppy or lazy coding.
HTML message is saved as a Web Page - If the message is a ’saved as a webpage’ (through Microsoft Word for example) there will be a comment within the HTML code indicating that. This comment should be removed prior to deployment.
Remove Comments - HTML editing programs (Frontpage, Dreamweaver, etc) add unnecessary comments to the finished document. For instance, they may identify what program was used to create the message. You can recognize these comments by “ ”
Filters look at this as sloppy coding and add “spam points”.
Colour and fonts - It is always best to stay within the web safe 6×6x6 colour palette and use only standard web-safe fonts. Avoid using multiple code fonts within a message.
Thick Borders - Avoid using a border size greater than 2.
Image Tags - Some email designers use Image Tags to track open rates. Filter programs look for these and view them negatively.
Text to Image Ratios - Avoid creating messages that rely to heavily on graphics. A message with a high ratio of image to text appears as spam to many filtering programs.

Posted in Email marketing |