The single biggest factor that we see for what gets considered spammy by an ISP has to do with the content sent in the email. We all know the type of things that come to mind when we say “spammy content”; Viagra, mail order brides, Nigerian 419 scams, using *~special characters~* and ALL CAPS.
It’s often much more subtle than this, though. Your subject line, the text to image balance of your content, and using clear and familiar language all factor into things. Keeping your content relevant and clear for your audience is important. So if you find yourself suddenly prey to the spam filter, we’d recommend taking a closer look at what you’re sending and evaluate how you engage your readers.
Spam filters employ a community-based method of reporting spam. If there are recipients that are not opening your emails, trashing them all together or marking them as spam then they’re likely to route your email directly to spam for other recipients. So engaging your readers is key. When you hear of recipients finding your email in their spam folder, the best thing they can do is mark it as “not spam”. ISPs have even been known to randomly route an email to spam just to see if the recipient is willing to go in and rescue it. Your readers are powerful, engage them.
The last, and most common, area we see where TinyLetter users get into trouble with spam filters is the use of trending links in their letters. When you share trending links, keep in mind that those same links could be getting attention from spammy sources as well. ISPs will use any common identifier they can find in emails to identify potential spam. To prevent this from happening to you, we recommend using a custom URL shortener for the URLs you share so that your links don’t raise a red flag, like http://bit.do/ or http://tiny.cc/.
