EMAIL MARKETING MISCONCEPTIONS
Misconception: "An incorrect interpretation or understanding." So with that definition in mind, I've whittled a number of misconceptions down to the three I hear propagated most often.
_ Never Use the Word Free
_ Don't Send Emails on Weekends
_ Improve Results by Growing Your List
While there are varying levels of truth to each of the above statements, they are not universal truths. As some product warnings state, "your results may differ." So let's look a little deeper at these three commonly held email-marketing truisms.
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Never Use the Word "Free" - Perhaps the most common misconception in email marketing is that you should "never use the word free." By itself, the word free will not cause any of the major spam or content filters to reject your email. (Though it is possible that some corporations or user-driven spam filters might be set to delete emails containing the word "free") So why then would you risk using free when there is a chance, albeit small, your email might be filtered? Quite simply, better results. In our experience across various clients, when used correctly, the word free can provide a powerful boost to your results.
Not convinced? Ok, let's look at two popular spam content filters to see how they actually work and treat your freeladen emails.
Spam Assassin - Spam Assassin is one of the leading "test-based" spam filters and many of the large ISPs model their own filters after Spam Assassin's test algorithm. The Spam Assassin filter assigns points - positive and negative - to the content and coding of an email. An email is run through the filter and is assigned positive points (in this case positive means potential spam) and negative points (content and coding believed not generally used by spammers). (A legitimate email that is filtered as a result of these positive scores is referred to as a "false-positive.")
The score is totaled and if it exceeds a certain level it is filtered. Users of Spam Assassin can change the test score values and determine the level at which emails are filtered. It is generally believed that most companies/ISPs use a total score of around 10, but that some may go as low as 4.
So, what does this mean when using free? Review the Spam Assassin list and you will see that a number of phrases that use free do receive fairly high scores of 1 and higher. But phrases commonly used by legitimate marketers such as "free shipping," "free e-book" and "free white paper" are not affected.