Email Marketing - What I Learned this Week

After almost 10 years as a student of Email Marketing I am still peddling to keep up with this mercurial medium. Below are some key takeouts of what I learned this week...

Twitter
Emails containing links to Twitter are now getting filtered by Barracuda and Spam Assasin.

Product names
If you send emails that contain names of products and spammers have taken to marketing that product, it is likely that the large ISP’s will filter your email regardless of your reputation or the validity of your offering.

Images
Large ISP’s are now scanning your email images to see if they contain large call to action buttons like “Click Here” or pill bottles as these images are often used in spam.

User Interaction
ISP’s track how users interact with your message to see how users interact with your message – beyond the open and click, have they printed it?, trashed it? Forwarded it? This all contributes to your reputation as a sender.

You are getting fingerprinted
ISP’s create a “fingerprint” of you as a mailer using the static components of your messages – including the “From” field, unsubscribe links and CAN SPAM compliance headers.

Google Wave
Google Wave will change everything. I am not sure exactly how yet but it will. Don't take me at my word - watch this.

Under 25’s are trigger happy
You can significantly reduce the number of Spam Complaints that your mailings receive by mailing to 25+ year olds only. Under 25’s know that hitting the “SPAM” button unsubscribes them instantly and they don’t have to hassle with the unsubscribe instructions – unfortunate but true.