How Subject Lines Resembling Spam Hinder Deliverability

A lot depends on what you are putting in the subject line when sending a marketing email. It can make or break your email marketing campaign. The receivers are fed up of getting emails like “download this software for free” or “upgrade for free” or “RE: some software”. Now, it is difficult even for an email marketer to identify which emails are from a legitimate software marketer based on subject line the how someone could expect recipients to guess. And when receivers can't identify them they think that it is spam. They will simply send the message to trash and would even report the message as spam or unsubscribe from the email program.

Irrespective of whatever action they might take you'll have delivery problems. One should never take it for granted when you are earning the goodwill of the subscribers. There have been innumerable instances where marketers in spite of not being spammers were mistaken to be spammers and dealt with heavy fallout. This is a word of caution for anyone who is actively involved in email marketing but in particular to those who deal in healthcare, financial services, technology, and luxury goods.

The best guard against mistaken identity is the subject line which means that one must hard and get really creative to outsmart spammers. The subject line must not only be catching to the eye but also brief, informative and provide assurance to the recipients that the email came from a trusted source.

The best thing to do is to be awake and vigilant of the spammers around you. One should take a note that spammers usually use the key events to launch their spam emails like around product launches, national disasters, holidays and news events to entice recipients and make them open their emails.

The launch of Microsoft's new operating system Vista could be taken as an ideal example here wherein every spammer try to take advantage of its release and spam everybody's emails with promotions of vista. Now, due to this a real marketer could become a culprit. If a real marketer tries to endorse the same product through legitimate means the recipients thinking that this email also came from the spammers would simply spam it. Next morning an email marketer wakes up to see nothing but countless number of spam complaints resulting in blocking emails from this particular email marketer. What is the cause of this? It didn't happen due to incorrect filtering of content but due to recipients not being able to differentiate between legitimate email and spam. The email marketer in this case lost both excellent reputation and good subscribers. Thus, one should realize the importance of good subject line and save oneself from paying huge price of losing reputation and clients.

To avoid falling into these traps keep an eye on alerts as well as reports triggered from anti-virus and anti-spam companies which keeps track and reports virus and spam outbreaks related to some specific events. Good thing about those reports is that they also contain spam emails with subject lines, which would help in noting down the keywords and phrases that spammers have used and thus avoiding them in your emails. Also, be careful and watchful if the email marketing program coincides with any key events or product launches and better stay away during that period. It is also not a bad idea to check your inbox and spam folder to see what subject lines the spammers are using and then stay away from those in your emails. Also, make sure that the name of the product, company and newsletter clearly shows in the subject bar to assure the recipients that it has come from a reliable source.