Why Are Some E-mails W.ritten L.ike Thi.s

[TTran]

I've seen it a lot from many email marketers and I'm starting to think it's some sort of tactic rather than some weird personal touch.

An.yone h.ave any c.lue?

[jaybaker]

no clue but have noticed the same thing.

[Dave]

They are trying to fly under the radar with spam filters. Certain words (free, viagra, etc) carry more weight with spam filters so they use extra characters to work around the filters.

FREE will trigger but FR.EE will not.

[Ebo Etoyep]

Originally Posted by TTran

I've seen it a lot from many email marketers and I'm starting to think it's some sort of tactic rather than some weird personal touch.

An.yone h.ave any c.lue?

In many cases, periods are used (rather ineffectively) to avoid spam filters. Other than that, it seems a little bit too intrusive to be of any other use. I wouldn't personally read an email written like that.

[AaronSnider]

emails are written like this to bypass spam filters. spam filters are programmed to use
certian words at keywords associated with spam. so in order to bypass those filters the
words are broken in such a manner that they will make it to your inbox and not your
spam folder.

[tommen]

Spam filters are triggered easily, so people are trying to avoid them.Personally, I try to avoid using words like free in my mailings, I use no fee instead. A thesaurus is very useful in these cases.

[KatyaSenina]

same goes for the word 'money', I think

[JayXtreme]

Emails are written like this because the sender believes (wrongly) that it will "beat" spam filters..

When in reality, this will probably trigger spam filters with I.S.P.'s more than it will if you are just straight with your mail..

E-mail marketers might have adapted these tactics to beat filters, but then the filters become updated, too.

Words like:

Free
Money
Cash
Easy Cash
Profits

etc etc have all been subject to spam filter questioning over the years, but, I've never had a problem using the words... Only the excessive use of trigger words will really trip the filters into thinking you are a scammer/spammer/thief/Nigerian bank official ...

Peace

Jay

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by Dave

FREE will trigger but FR.EE will not.

This is EXACTLY the same WRONG ASSUMPTION that makes them write like the OP is saying.

Many email marketers ASSUME some things, without actually verifying anything. Many other email marketers then COPY the idea thinking, "Hey, if X did it then it must be the correct way of doing it".

That was the easy path. However, this path will make your subscribers say

1) "Oh, yes, she/he's avoiding the spam filters" (yeah, sure ) and then they will do the same.

or

2) "WTF is that?"

If you like this, keep doing it.

If you don't like it, then there is another path, it takes more time, but it gets better results and you don't risk looking like someone who doesn't know how to write

That path is this one: understand how spam filters work. You can start for example here: SpamAssassin: Tests Performed: v3.2.x

[tjmiller]

Listen to Jay and ezine ads. When I see someone still using that tactic, to me it highlights their inexperience, and makes me question how much they really know about the whole business!

[Big Al]

Yep my understanding was to beat spam filters (and something like Aweber rates you message on how spammy it looks) but I'm on some big lists where they use free etc without any changes and it gets through fine.

[TTran]

Thanks for all of the great feedback guys. I'll watch out when using those "trigger" words when I start doing some e-mail marketing.

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by ezine ads

That path is this one: understand how spam filters work. You can start for example here: SpamAssassin: Tests Performed: v3.2.x

Check especially the tests for "Attempt to obfuscate words in spam" there.

[Martin.Avis]

It isn't just inexperience writers who do it - I see many emails from well-known people who use such distracting and silly constructions too.

I believe I'm right in saying that some people pass their emails through some kind of program that automatically breaks up words it doesn't approve of.

All I can say is that I never add periods or other odd characters to my emails, often use the words that are supposed to cause all the problems and haven't noticed any problems as a result.

Whenever I get an email with silly word constructions in it I automatically move it from my keep folder to my crap one.

Martin

[Richard Tunnah]

Originally Posted by Martin.Avis

It isn't just inexperience writers who do it - I see many emails from well-known people who use such distracting and silly constructions too.

I believe I'm right in saying that some people pass their emails through some kind of program that automatically breaks up words it doesn't approve of.

All I can say is that I never add periods or other odd characters to my emails, often use the words that are supposed to cause all the problems and haven't noticed any problems as a result.

Whenever I get an email with silly word constructions in it I automatically move it from my keep folder to my crap one.

Martin

Hi Martin,
Agree. I too have been surprised by some 'heavy weight' IM'ers breaking words up. Like you to me it's a distraction and also makes me question the value of any offer they are sending if they seem to be more interested in avoiding spam traps.

Rich

[tkulzer]

As Jay and others have pointed out, this is an *old* technique people used to use
when spam filters would dump something to the spam folder for a couple bad words
in the email content. Spam filters are a lot smarter these days and these techniques
are actually *more* likely to get you filtered since real email users don't write their
emails trying to blatantly avoid filters.

Don't use punctuation in the middle of words in emails in 2009 and beyond. Just use
the word. "Free" in the subject or body of an email is not going to exclusively get you
filtered.