How to Improve Your Spam Score

Every email message that you send is assigned a spam score by antispam filters lurking between you and your recipients. Like your credit score, your spam score affects your ability to gain the trust of decision making bodies. The difference is that you want your spam score to be as low as possible. A low credit score will make it difficult to get credit. A high spam score will make it difficult to get your messages delivered to the inbox of your recipients.

Spam scores are annotated by a numerical value from 0-10. The lower the better.

Spam filters scan your message before it reaches your recipient and assigns a score based on a long list of criteria. Here are some examples of things that will add points to your spam score (remember, adding points to your spam score is bad.)

• Subject starts with dollar amount
• Subject talks about losing pounds
• Subject: contains G.a.p.p.y-T.e.x.t
• From: domain has series of non-vowel letters
• Subject is all capitals
• HTML comment is very short
• HTML font size is large
• HTML includes a form which sends mail
• HTML has a low ratio of text to image area
• Contains ‘Dear (something)’
• Claims you can be removed from the list
• Talks about how to be removed from mailings
• Information on getting larger body parts
• Talks about millions of dollars
• Home refinancing
• Lowest Price
• Contains an URL listed in the SBL blocklist
• Phrase: F R E E
• Links to common unsubscribe script: ‘getmeoff.php’

The list of elements that these spam utlities use is long. Some of them are strange. Some of them are very specific. Some of them are unusual, like adding to your spam score if you talk about how someone can get removed from your list even though the CAN-Spam Act requires that you have an unsubscribe mechanism in each message that you send.

To improve your spam score (lower it), take a look at the current list of tasks performed by SpamAssasin – and eliminate as many of them as you can from your campaigns. You’ll never have a perfect spam score. There’s no such thing. But you do want to keep it as low as possible.

To complicate things a little more, SpamAssassin is just one of the antispam filters used to assign spam scores to your message (Barracuda is another.)

You can test your email against antispam filters before sending it out to your recipients. One easy way is to send your message with TEST in front of your Subject Line (i.e. TEST My Newsletter) to spamcheck@sitesell.net. They will revert with a spam score within minutes and outline specific elements of your message that contribute to that score.

In the end, like with your credit score, it is best to know what your spam score is rather than ignoring it and hoping that it will improve if you just don’t think about it.  Both can be improved when you take proactive steps to do so.