Spam Assassin Report – Follow the Rules!

Nobody wants their email to get caught in a spam folder, so let’s talk about steps to take to prevent that from happening as often as possible. When you create an Email Send, you have the option to test the email. Testing the email will allow you to see what it looks like in your email client. But that is not all – it will also give you a spam report. This tells you what might get flagged by a spam filter when you send your email.

All the rules you see in a test come from Spam Assassin. If you’re not sure what the rule means, entering the Rule Name in a search engine will usually lead you to the answer. Each rule is worth a different number of points, and they add up to the Spam Score. Try to keep your spam score below a 3.0 for better delivery results.

In this article, we will explain some of the common ones so that you can avoid them from the start.

NOTE: if you need to go back to your email and change something, make sure you edit from the Email Send. Use the Full Screen button at the top or the Open Editor button. If you go back to the Email Template and edit it there it will not affect the content of this Email Send at all. If you plan to use the same email template again, you can change both the template and the one email send editor.


HTML_MESSAGE: This will appear every time and adds nothing to your score, do not worry about this one at all.

MIME_HTML_ONLY:

Problem: There is no text version.

Solution: We highly recommend having a text version for people who may not be able to read HTML on their device. And with the automatic text version generator button, it’s very easy!

HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG:

Problem: There are no <html></html> tags in your template.

Solution: Open the full screen editor of your email designer and go to the HTML tab at the bottom left. At the very top, before all the other text type <html>. Then go to the very bottom of the text and type </html>. Save and re-test.

HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08 or HTML_IMAGE_RATIO_08: (Note: the number (08) may be different depending on the ratio)

    Problem: The ratio of images to text is too high (there are too many images and too little text).

Solution: Either increase the amount of text or decrease the amount of images. On this one also pay attention to the number of points it’s giving you – if it’s lower you don’t need to worry about it as much.

FREEMAIL_FROM:

Problem: The From Email address in your Email Send is from an email address from a free provider like Google (@gmail) or Yahoo (@yahoo).

    Solution: Use a different email address with your company domain.

Note: There are a couple of others in the screenshot above that are a result of this same issue – DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED and NML_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED

There are many other spam rules, but the ones discussed above come up most often. If you receive any spam rules you can fix, just make your changes, save, hit test again, and repeat until you’ve got a low score!

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