Non-Line Blogging

Argos.co.uk I think I love you.

For several years marketers have been talking themselves out of using "FREE" or even "Free" in email subject lines.  "We'll end up with a bad reputation and blocked by ISP's for ever", they cried.  More and more marketers joined the chorus until even their colleagues in Finance would stop them in a corridor and say

"I was playing golf with my accountant friend Jack and he said we should never use "Free" in our subject lines".  

So, Mr Finance Director, just suppose you compete with Argos in the UK e-commerce market and into your inbox come the following email...

The Argos e-commerce team seem to know more than others about email delivery and, since "Free" is one of the most powerful motivators in our language I hope they are reaping handsome rewards for their know-how.  So, how are they doing it?

In short, the deliverability war has moved on from simplistic "content filtering" and is now based more on "consent" and "reputation".  I won't go into a big lecture on all that right now, but here is what you really ought to know.

1.  Consent - Get people to add you to their address book will ensure that emails you send (from the same address) will by-pass local Spam filters on clients like Outlook and web-based systems like Yahoo and Windows Live Mail.

2.  Reputation.  Do the right things - don't re-mail un-subscribes, or blast out lists with a high bounce rate, or send dull messages that nobody will respond to.  They will tarnish your reputation and organisations like SenderScore will share that bad reputation with ISP's and business mail hosting service providers.

For reference, Spamassassin does indeed have a "naughty boy" point for using the word FREE in the Subject line, but it is only a single point and is only 1 of several hundred rules that are run against all your emails.  However, there are worse tests to fail but thankfully people in Finance don't know about them.  Wouldn't it be a great day if somebody came up to you and said:

"I was playing golf with my accountant friend Jack and he said we should check our messages for X-IP Headers as they attract almost 3 times more points than using the word "Free".

Here are some of the Spamassassin checks you may want to get excited about, but you will never know what score triggers filtering, or what % of a total process is made up of the Spamassassin elements so it really is a blunt tool for precise filtering from the marketers' perspective.  (you can find them all here but it still won't give you any clues as to how many points your message needs to get delivered - it will vary every day and for every in-bound filtering system); first up is everybody's favourite with the word FREE, then I have shown one of many tests done on the "header" of your message, and finally one to show that even filtering tools now factor in some kind of reputation checks...you can start off with MINUS 100 points if you have all the Authentication tools in place.

So, how do you know if its safe to use FREE?

Well, the first thing we can do is know our Reputation as others will see it.  Head over to Senderscore and read all the lovely stuff they have written about reputation-based filtering.  Then find out your own reputation score by doing the following...here'e the results for Argos.

First, find out your sender IP address - its somewhere in the message headers.  This is where it is in Outlook 2007

Then copy the IP address and pop it into the FREE (!) Senderscore Reputation checker (you will need to register to see more detailed information).  This will give you your reputation as others see you:

So, with a 70 out of 100 overall reputation score, a 100% delivery rate and a "Low" risk it is quite likely that most ISP's will allow most Argos messages through without getting excited about the words and pictures they use.  And with powerful motivators like "free" in there, I hope they are enjoying wonderfully high click and conversion rates.

Just to validate my thinking here is one from deep in my Gmail Spam folder...with a 5 out of 100 its got little chance of getting into my primary inbox regardless of the words

And finally, just like a personal credit record in the financial services world, sometimes having no reputation is as bad as having a poor reputation.  Here is a lovely email that made its way into my Junk Mail folder

...and here is the reputation report from Senderscore, showing that little or no activity gives them too little information upon which to base their opinions:

So, to summarise, don't hang on to outdated, over-simplistic email filtering rules.  Get good at managing your reputation and take a few "risks" once you know that your message has a good chance of being delivered.  Keep testing campaigns to check delivery into Outlook, Lotus Notes, Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail and if all seems good, keep filling up those subject lines with presuasive words!  Way to go, Argos!!