20+ hints on better spam check optimization

August 24th, 2007
By Luca

This is a follow-up to the popular “Hints on better sending” article from September.
If a large part of your messages are not delivered, chances are they are being deleted by antispam filters by mistake, and then marked with a Spam Message Tag.
Here is a list of guidelines you can follow when creating your messages… and never wonder why my email goes straight into spam folder?

1. If you’re using HTML emails, include a text part in the email as well, for recipients (and anti-spam checkers), and keep that text as close to the HTML copy as possible. The closer they’re related, the less likely your email will be seen as spam.
2. Keep your message’s layout as simple as possible. Avoid complex formatting (yes, it will make it look better, but less people will receive it).
3. Pay particular attention to your mailing’s subject: never use exclamation point (!), CAPITALIZATION, and words as “free”, “guaranteed”, and gappy text (t h i s i s g a p p y t e x t)
4. Avoid generic salutation formulas as “Dear User”; it is even better to avoid salutation at all.
5. If you’re using HTML emails, use high quality HTML emails. Don’t use tools which generate horrendous HTML (example: MS Word). They often leave signs behind (like empty tags, eg: ) which are generally found in spam. Unbalanced tags and invalid tags will also flag an email as spam. If you use a title, make sure the title is meaningful — the default titles generated by HTML tools are often used as spamsign.
6. Don’t insert active components (javascript, ActiveX, plug-ins) in your message. If you need rich media content, just link to a media-rich page on your web site.
7. Don’t insert too much graphic in your message, too much images will alert the spam check filters. Your message will get lower the lower spam check rates the less images you use.
8. Avoid attaching files; use links to files hosted on a web server instead.
9. Use email composition and mailing tools that work correctly. Well constructed emails (technically correct) can be readily identified as not-spam. Emails with missing mime sections, invalid or missing message-ids, invalid or missing date headers, subject or other headers with unescaped unicode, etc., are frequently signs of spam.
10. Avoid useless or needless encodings. Don’t use base-64 encoded text unless you need to.
11. Don’t include a disclaimer that your email isn’t spam. Don’t claim compliance with some legal criteria, especially one which is not actually law in your country. Only spam needs to claim compliance: non-spam is supposed to already be in compliance.
12. Use normal conversational language, be sure not to use excessive spacing and or capitalization on your subject.
13. Do not use “cute” spellings, Don’t S.P.A.C.E out your words, don’t put str@nge |etters 0r characters into your emails.
14. If you’re using HTML emails, do not use invisible web-bugs to track your emails. If you must track your emails and whether they’re read, use visible graphics as part of your email, not invisible graphics.
15. Don’t include gratuitous references to spam subjects. Don’t talk about rolex watches, sexually oriented activities or drugs, or debt treatment, unless those topics directly relate to your email. And if they do, limit your email to one topic at a time. An email which mentions rolex watches, Viagra, porn, and debt all in one email will very possibly hit several rules that flag it as spam, even if everything else is clear.
16. Don’t use tools used by spammers (i.e., advertised in spam).
17. Use a well performing, well administered and trusted SMTP server. Most undeliverable mails come from poor SMTP services, which often lead to being blacklisted: make sure your SMTP service’s staff is ready to help if you are blacklisted by mistake.
18. Make sure your privacy policy, including enforcement, and including query contact information, is easily found and clearly stated on your web site. It’s good to include this information (where to find this policy, contact information), in your emails. Again, people who need to find out whether you’re spammer will often look for that information: this will help you in staying out of blacklists.
19. Be careful where you advertise, and be careful which advertisements you carry. If you advertise with companies that send out spam, your domains will be flagged as being related to spam. If you carry advertisements for those who spam, your domains will be flagged as being related to spam.
20. Be careful which domains/companies you allow to advertise in your emails (if any). Allowing spammers to advertise will get your emails flagged by the URI blacklists. On the other hand, don’t advertise your domains with spammers — having your domain name listed in their spams can also get you flagged by some URI blacklists.
21. Install and try our little free Email Mailing Check Spam Rate Software, and know what spam filters think about your email.

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Spam score filter failure

August 22nd, 2007
By Simon

Today I’ve found an interesting article about spam filters failure. I post it here because we can use some of these methods to send our clean opt-in emails through the server spam filters.

In early July of 2006 there was a prominent stream of spam messages that simply quoted three random lines of the book ‘the hobbit’, with a subject header of 6 random letters. The popular belief is that this was a ’script kiddie’ who had got hold of spam suite and was inept in it’s use. This belief was reinforced shortly after when the same messages began appearing with an image overlaid, a popular spammer trick(The seemingly innocent words allow the message to bypass filters but all that is displayed on opening the message is the picture).

It’s nice to put seemingly random and pointless messages down to inept practice on the part of the spammer, but my personal belief is this is not the case. To me this seems to look like a deliberate attempt to corrupt the improving Bayesian Filter technology. Bayesian filters work by assigning a spam score to words that are found in spam e-mails. The more regularly they appear in a spam message, the higher the spam score and the more likely a message contianing those words is to be marked as spam.

Given that piece of knowledge, imagine the implications of a concerted campaign of spammed messages that contains a short message of commonly used words. The ’spam score’ of these words is elevated, the effectiveness of the bayesian filter is diminished and when the real spam message is sent through the defenses are lowered, or indeed have been removed having provided too many false positives.

The obvious clue to me is in the way these messages are sent. Firstly the title is randomised. Many Bayesian filters treat nonsense as ‘high spam’ score. Furthermore title text is usually given a higher priority than body text. Thus a nonsense title may be enough to get a message banned by itself, and combined with a common spammer trick such as the picture overlay, it seems the spammer wanted these messages to be caught.

As more people come to rely on Bayesian filtering, this will become a more and more serious problem. We already know spammers are prepared to send out millions of messages just to get one sale. Now it appears that they are also prepared to make multiple mailings to those millions of addresses just to soften up anti-spam defenses for their one commercial mailing.

Article source here.

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10 simple rules to avoid the junk folder

August 10th, 2007
By Simon

Here are some advices you can follow writing your email, or newsletter to have your email spam rate free optimized.

• Put less images and more text
• If you need HTML layout always include a text only version
• Avoid dangerous words (pharmacies… erectile drugs etc.)
• Always include a pertinent subject
  • example: March 11th Newsletter: featuring jacuzzi swimming pools
  • is much better than: INCREDIBLE!!1! SWIMMING POOL OFFER APPLY NOW LOOL ^___^
• use white backgrounds
• don’t use big fonts
• always check the email before sending with our free spam check score software.
• send emails only to your optin built mailing list
• never paste an html email from miscrosoft word (try dreamweaver or sendblaster instead)

For a perfect exam of your email message spam score, download MailingCheck, it’s a free spam rate score desktop software

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The email spam score: part 3, server side

August 02nd, 2007
By Simon

Now, we know how to calculate an email spam score: installing our MailingCheck software for spam rating it’s free and easy. This spam score will let us know if our email will be stopped by the spam filters of the ISP (Internet Service Provider). Today we will learn the difference between minor email spam points score and major email spam points score.

Let’s consider Spam rate just a sum of points based on SpamAssassin’s rules set: each spam rule has a different value. Major spam points are usually added when the message has beed listed in some spam filter network, minor spam points are based on email composition rules.
Example: if your email has been listed in DCC (it’s a spam filter network) we add 3,6 Spam score Points… this is very bad.
If your email is in HTML format and contains the Tbody tag it gets 0,1 Spam score Points.

We can operate on the minor spam check points additions, because we cannot deal with the server side spam reporting system. What we can do is:

• send a email only when it’s requested (double opt-in mailing list subscription it’s the better solution)

• Know and apply the spam rules to our email, writing and sending clean emails that follows the spam rules.

If our email has been marked as spam for mistake you’ll have to start a complex procedure, different for each spam reporting network. You can find these procedures linked in MailingCheck broken rule’s reason. Be sure to have a low spam score rate for your email, the inbx rate will constantly increase.

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The email spam score: part 2

July 26th, 2007
By Simon

Today we analyze some HTML email spam score in detail. I use the SendBlaster software template engine for automating the creation of my email, plus Adobe Dreamweaver to create and modify my newsletter HTML email details.

I choose a template and I save a .eml file. Lets analyze it without changes:

it gets a BAD spam score (5,1 points).

This happens because every email needs a lot of attention before it can be sent to your customers.

Now lets analyze the common errors:

1,3 spam check points: Subject Missing
I must write something in the subject field, the title of my newsletter for example.

1 spam check point: Low body to pixel area ratio
Text is always more important than images, so I must write someting before I can put an image.

0,8 spam check points: images with 2800-3200 bytes of words
Remember what learned before: Text must have priority, so if I want to include images I must write something more, just a description it’s ok.

0,5 spam check points: spam check points: HTML only message:
We must include a text only version of the email, we just click on Sendblaster text from HTML button.
This is done for the clients that don’t want to use HTML rendering.

0,3 spam check points: HTML tag for a big font size
I have a 40pixel style in my template… this seem interesting for my readers, but 40px is too much! I put 20pixel, it’s

enough for every title.

… now that I have a low email spam score, my email is rated GOOD (1,2 total points) by the SpamAssassin engine.

and remember, the most important part is up to you: write an interesting content for your readers.

download here email spam score checking software

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