Anti-spam detection methods look at several factors and create a "spam score" for each message. When a spam score is high enough, the message will be marked as spam.
Here are some simple ways to avoid common mistakes which can raise the spam score for your message:
- Avoid strange use of capitalization, symbols, and punctuation
- Don’t use ALL CAPS or aLtErNaTe capitalization for effect
- Don’t use symbols like @ or ! as substitutes for letters in a word
- Emails with multiple exclamation points or question marks can look suspicious
- Make sure your emails are at least one full sentence
- Don’t send an email that only includes an embedded image or link
- Spam messages are often very short, sentence fragments, or only a few words
- Your subject line should be related to the body of your email message
- Spammers often try to lure you in with a misleading subject line
- Avoid using ! marks
- Avoid using all capitals
- Keep the subject line neutral and not urgent
- Limit the use of common spam phrases
- Words like "free" and "diet" and "pharmaceuticals" are often used in spam messages
- Avoid deceptive and malicious links in your message as well as an excessive amount of links
- Too many attachments can make your message appear suspect
- Avoid using a reply-to address that goes to a different domain than your sender address
- Keep Social Media links to a minimum - do not use Social Media links on external emails if possible.
If your message has been marked as spam incorrectly, look at the list above, make any necessary changes, and try sending again.