How to avoid the Outlook junk filter

Part of getting noticed – the theme of this Being Smarter blog is getting emails past not only human gatekeepers, but the worst gate keeper of all in the corporate domain – the dreaded Outlook Junk filter.

To say it is an inaccurate and overzealous piece of software is an understatement. At first glance, it appears to have little consistency too – emails from the same person sometimes get through, sometimes don’t. As a receiver of plenty of emails – I will always give the junk folder a once over before SHIFT-DELETING (delete forever as opposed to deleting to the delete folder – it’s not as if you’re likely to ever need the mails in the junk folder ever again…)

Here are some rules I’ve picked up along the way to help you get round this junk filter whether you’re sending a single mail or an email marketing campaign.

A company called MAPILab reverse engineered the spam filter in Outlook 2003 and beyond and believes that its spam filter gives different weights to different emails depending on several categories. According to MAPILab, the following steps are taken by Outlook to consider whether email is junk or not:

• message sending time check–messages sent on a Saturday or Sunday are more closely correlated with spam than messages sent on a Wednesday)
• check of the message subject for words in uppercase–if words in uppercase make 25% or more of the total number of words, then the email is more correlated with spam
• check of the sign number in the message subject–this test calculates the ratio of signs (symbols which are neither letters nor numbers) to the number of signs, letters, and numbers. If the ratio exceeds 8%, email is more closely correlated with spam
• check of duplicate character number–this test counts the maximum number of duplicate characters in the message subject. In many spam messages there is a sequence of meaningless (to recipients) symbols separated by several dozens of spaces

Avoid the following in your FROM address

• Numbers in the first 8 character of the address
• Success
• Sales
• Profit
• Hello
• Mail
• public in the domain
• saavy in the domain

Avoid the following in the body or subject

• Subject contains “advertisement”
• Body contains “money back “
• Body contains “cards accepted”
• Body contains “removal instructions”
• Body contains “extra income”
• Subject contains “!” AND Subject contains “$”
• Subject contains “!” AND Subject contains “free”
• Body contains “,000″ AND Body contains “!!” AND Body contains “$”
• Body contains “Dear friend”
• Body contains “for free?”
• Body contains “for free!”
• Body contains “Guarantee” AND (Body contains “satisfaction” OR Body contains “absolute”)
• Body contains “more info ” AND Body contains “visit ” AND Body contains “$”
• Body contains “SPECIAL PROMOTION”
• Body contains “one-time mail”
• Subject contains “$$”
• Body contains “
• Body contains “order today”
• Body contains “order now!”
• Body contains “money-back guarantee”
• Body contains “100% satisfied”
• Body contains “mlm”
• Body contains “@mlm”
• Body contains “///////////////”
• Body contains “check or money order”

Feel free to add your insights below so we can grow the list…