Ask a Deliverability Expert: Do I Need to Exclude Spammy Words From My Email?

These stories are presented thanks to Who Sponsors Stuff, which gives you and your team the tools to quickly find and reach out to relevant sponsors for your newsletter. They track 350+ newsletters, have direct contact information for 6,000+ sponsors, and keep you on the cutting edge of who’s spending money in the email advertising space. Find out how their Sales Pro product can supercharge your ad sales operation today.

We cover news topics that occasionally touch on adult topics. Do we need to censor any words to avoid being marked as spam?

If you Google the top ten ways to ensure you end up in the inbox, you will most likely find a couple of articles that give you lists of words not to use in your subject line or content.

Here is the first list I found (category: Manipulative words):

Act now Action Apply now Apply online Buy Buy direct Call Call now Click here Clearance Click here Do it today Don’t delete Drastically reduced Exclusive deal Expire

Get Get it now Get started now Important information regarding Instant Limited time New customers only Now only Offer expires Once in a lifetime Order now Please read Special promotion Take action This won’t last Urgent

If these words couldn’t be used in email, I think marketers would have lots of issues creating appealing and valuable content for their customers. Let’s start by talking through what it takes to create great content for your audience (that doesn’t land in spam).

“What do you mean my content isn’t amazing or being read?”

When writing content for your audience, you need to start with what your recipients need/want. Do they need or want yet another promotion or coupon? Or will sending them a valuable update that gets them excited and back on your website work better for your brand and ROI?

In order to get people to do what you want (buy a product, come back to your website, leave a review, etc.), you need to do two things: 1.) Build a meaningful relationship based on trust with your audience, and 2.) Focus on sending the content they want to get — not just the things you want to send. When we put our marketer hats on, we forget how annoyed we get when we are on the consumer’s side. We all get tired of receiving emails that:

• Only care about reminding us a business exists.
• Talk about things we don’t care about.
• Give a 5% coupon for one product on their website that is only $5 to begin with.
• Show up too frequently in the inbox —  especially if we haven’t opened any emails from that sender in a while.
• Don’t have a visible and easy unsubscribe button.
• Have a clickbait subject line or a weird CTA or just don’t feel relevant to you (probably because the sender bought an email list and doesn’t know anything about you except your email address)
• [Insert any other annoying tactic we hate]

Let’s be honest: How likely are you to buy from a sender that clutters your inbox or doesn’t provide true value to you on a regular basis?

Here’s my favorite example:

You need a new mattress, so you start searching online. Maybe you’ve got a few mattress-related emails in your inbox from a purchase you made long ago, or maybe you subscribe to emails from a handful of mattress brands. This is an important purchase so you take it seriously, especially considering the price of a new mattress and the importance of sleep quality. But once the day comes when you buy your glorious mattress, you might notice that the mattress emails keep showing up in your inbox, even though you’ve just made a purchase from that brand! Would the most magical email subject line or CTA make you want to buy another mattress… and then another, and maybe another?

So what can a mattress store do to get anything back from audience members who have already made the big purchase? They can ask for reviews, sell sheets or pillows, and even help customers with tips and tricks to maintain their new mattress. They can employ other strategies to drive revenue and build customer loyalty.

And what does this have to do with the original question? Well, if you want to ensure not to land in spam or hurt your sender reputation, the most important thing isn’t which specific words you are using in your email. Spam filters are pretty smart and can contextualize content or rely on your historical reputation. They’ll understand that if you are a pharmaceutical company, for instance, certain topics/words are to be expected. What is most important isn’t the words you use but how your audience engages with your email. I’m not talking about open or click rates only. We should all want our audience to take the time to read the email properly and bathe in all its glory!

What might land you in the spam folder? A clickbait subject line that makes people roll their eyes when they finally open it — and then click the “Mark as spam” button after they feel they’ve been tricked into opening your email.

So, can I use “spammy words”? Just tell us already!

Yes, you can use those so-called “spammy words,” but use them with some common sense. What is important is remaining consistent so when ISPs get your email, they see it as expected content. We all need to remember that email deliverability is complex and relies on many data points. Content is one of the data points that is taken into consideration by ISPs. “Spammy-looking content” mixed in with other red flags might make your email land in spam for some of your recipients, but the specific words aren’t likely to get you there alone. It is the harsh reality of deliverability.

In 2020, as so many parts of the world shut down during the pandemic, businesses realized that social media wasn’t exactly enough to ensure the most amazing sales numbers. Some businesses noticed quickly that email was the best way to communicate with customers and drive conversions. Do you remember the type of content we received, though? Businesses that sold, sold, sold aggressively now started sending these beautifully-crafted emails stating they were thinking of us, hoping we were still doing well and asking us to tell them if there was anything they could possibly do to make our lives easier!

The issue in this case was obviously not “spammy” content. A business showing they care isn’t spammy… or is it? Two issues arose:

Spammers started using “we care about you” content, too. They were actually scamming people (identity theft, credit card fraud, etc), while many marketers started sending similar-looking content at the same exact time. And another thing: Brands had suddenly changed the way they talked to their customers — the content type and tone was so different from how they’d talked to customers just weeks earlier. That rapid pivot made things incredibly tough for spam filters, who weren’t sure how to treat these emails.

This isn’t a pandemic-specific issue, but we see it every year with Black Friday and the holidays, for example. The world of marketing LOVES holidays. We just need to be careful and ensure if we are going to send an email that is different than the norm, we build up to it. Warm-up isn’t only for IPs and domains — they can also be used to help a business transition from one content type to another, increase the frequency of their emails due to holidays, and adjust their content or tone without shocking spam filters.

Always ensure you give the spam filters the time to understand that your brand is changing the way it communicates with its customers. If you want to stay out of the spam folder, you don’t need to worry about avoiding those spammy words. Just stay focused on maintaining a great sender reputation by sending valuable emails at the right time to the right people.

Have a question that you’d like Yanna-Torry to answer in a future edition of Ask a Deliverability Expert? Submit it here.

Thanks to our sponsors
The stories you’re reading on inboxcollective.com are made possible thanks to the generous support of our summer sponsors: ∙ Selzy, an easy-to-use email marketing platform ∙ Who Sponsors Stuff, a tool to help you find relevant sponsors for your newsletter