The Email Wars

A common email marketing misconception is email is filtered because it contains words such as “free” in the subject line or body. By itself, that won’t get your email filtered. Though certain content combinations may get a message filtered, ISPs may be trapping your legitimate email for infractions you rarely pay attention to.

Take HTML code. Using outdated or incorrect code is a major reason why email to domains such as MSN/Hotmail and AOL are blocked or delivered to bulk or junk mail folders.

You may think you don’t have to worry about this. Your email may render correctly and look just fine to you. Wrong! Pivotal Veracity, a delivery-monitoring service provider, estimates nearly 100 percent of all HTML email doesn’t comply with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.

Because each ISP handles email differently, messages that get past the filters at one destination may be filtered or entirely blocked at another. Why are some ISPs so concerned about HTML code? You can thank spammers, of course. HTML syntax and format errors are common tricks spammers use to foil standard content filters.

Some W3C infractions are minor and won’t cause email to be filtered. An example is not using “alt” tags, which describe the content in an image tag. Many other innocuous-appearing coding errors or tricks may send your email straight to the bulk folder.