I was reminded today that designing email campaigns that get by spam filters isn’t just a big challenge for newbies; but for well established companies too.

An email I received from Jupiter Media, who’ve been around the web forever, had a massive spam score of 14. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spam score quite that high :).

There were various transgressions, but one of the major issues that tripped them up aside from the email having a ton of images which really isn’t good practice anyway, is that it had a pile of affiliate network links.

I think I’ve mentioned this in the past, but affiliate links in email campaigns are a huge red flag - it’s always best to set up a redirect on your site if you’re promoting something through an affiliate network. I outline how to achieve this in my article on affiliate link cloaking.

There’s so many issues these days that can see your email campaign on the wrong side of a spam filter - pick up some tips to help prevent this from happening.