{"id":18953,"date":"2018-08-07T12:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T10:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hetzner.co.za\/help-centre\/?p=18953"},"modified":"2025-12-30T11:31:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T09:31:16","slug":"spam-prevention-best-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/email\/spam-prevention-best-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"How to prevent your email being marked as spam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Spam<\/strong> is defined as email that is sent to a <strong>large number of recipients<\/strong>, where the recipients have not explicitly <strong>given permission<\/strong> to be emailed and the purpose of the email is to <strong>solicit a commercial action<\/strong>, eg. selling a product.<\/p>\n<p>Mail servers use <strong>spam filters<\/strong> in an attempt to prevent spam from reaching the intended mailboxes. These spam filters use a variety of\u00a0<strong>filtering techniques<\/strong>\u00a0to attempt to accurately determine whether an email is spam or not. Many of these spam filter &#8216;rules&#8217; are based on words or characters that are commonly used in spam.<\/p>\n<p>These techniques are dynamic and adapted on a regular basis as spam emails evolve in nature and content in an attempt to fool and bypass these filters.\u00a0For this reason\u00a0there is\u00a0no complete list of rules to\u00a0guarantee that email will pass spam checks. There are, however, some best practices you can follow to lessen the chance of your email inadvertently being classified as\u00a0spam.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Note: If you are not receiving legitimate mail to your email address as it is incorrectly being marked as spam by our spam filters (i.e. false positives), use <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/control-panel\/allow-or-block-an-email-address\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Allow\/Block List<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in your Control Panel<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Email best practice<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Avoid using all capitals in your subject and body unnecessarily.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid using punctuation in the subject.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid using excessive punctuation in the body, eg. punctuation!!??<\/li>\n<li>Avoid substituting letters with numbers, eg. w3b h0sting<\/li>\n<li>Avoid having gaps between the letters in words, eg. l e t t e r s<\/li>\n<li>Avoid using many different font colours in your email.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid using large font sizes.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid using gimmicky words or phrases that are commonly found in spam emails, eg: <em>Click Here, Buy Now, As Seen On, Money Making, Get Paid, Make Cash, Pre-Approved, Hot Deal, Satisfaction Guaranteed, Lowest Prices, Save Big, <\/em>etc.<\/li>\n<li>Include a text version of your email if you are sending an email in HTML format.<\/li>\n<li>Maintain a good text to image ratio, ie. for every image include at least two lines of text.<\/li>\n<li>Ensure that your internet IP address assigned to you by your Internet Service Provider is not listed on a spam blacklist.<\/li>\n<li>Add an accurate <a href=\"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/email\/spf\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SPF<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/control-panel\/add-dkim-records-mail\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DKIM<\/a> DNS record to your domain.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid using shortened URLs (web links) in your email body, eg. bit.ly or goo.gl<\/li>\n<li>Avoid adding a large number\u00a0of URLs (web links) to the email body.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid using rude language or poor spelling.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even if you do follow the above best practices, there may still be a chance that an email you have sent ends up in the recipient\u2019s junk or spam folder. Spam filter administrators do not publicise their filtering techniques in a bid to stop spammers from circumventing spam filtering.<\/p>\n<p>It is therefore advisable that if you do not receive a response within the expected time frame to follow up with the recipient via alternate means to confirm receipt of your email.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"plain":"<strong>Spam<\/strong> is defined as email that is sent to a <strong>large number of recipients<\/strong>, where the recipients have not explicitly <strong>given permission<\/strong> to be emailed and the purpose of the email is to <strong>solicit a commercial action<\/strong>, eg. selling a product.\r\n\r\nMail servers use <strong>spam filters<\/strong> in an attempt to prevent spam from reaching the intended mailboxes. These spam filters use a variety of\u00a0<strong>filtering techniques<\/strong>\u00a0to attempt to accurately determine whether an email is spam or not. Many of these spam filter 'rules' are based on words or characters that are commonly used in spam.\r\n\r\nThese techniques are dynamic and adapted on a regular basis as spam emails evolve in nature and content in an attempt to fool and bypass these filters.\u00a0For this reason\u00a0there is\u00a0no complete list of rules to\u00a0guarantee that email will pass spam checks. There are, however, some best practices you can follow to lessen the chance of your email inadvertently being classified as\u00a0spam.\r\n<blockquote>Note: If you are not receiving legitimate mail to your email address as it is incorrectly being marked as spam by our spam filters (i.e. false positives), use <span >the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/control-panel\/allow-or-block-an-email-address\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span >Allow\/Block List<\/span><\/a><span > in your Control Panel<\/span>.<\/blockquote>\r\n<h2>Email best practice<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using all capitals in your subject and body unnecessarily.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using punctuation in the subject.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using excessive punctuation in the body, eg. punctuation!!??<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid substituting letters with numbers, eg. w3b h0sting<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid having gaps between the letters in words, eg. l e t t e r s<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using many different font colours in your email.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using large font sizes.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using gimmicky words or phrases that are commonly found in spam emails, eg: <em>Click Here, Buy Now, As Seen On, Money Making, Get Paid, Make Cash, Pre-Approved, Hot Deal, Satisfaction Guaranteed, Lowest Prices, Save Big, <\/em>etc.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Include a text version of your email if you are sending an email in HTML format.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Maintain a good text to image ratio, ie. for every image include at least two lines of text.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Ensure that your internet IP address assigned to you by your Internet Service Provider is not listed on a spam blacklist.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Add an accurate <a href=\"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/email\/spf\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SPF<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/control-panel\/add-dkim-records-mail\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DKIM<\/a> DNS record to your domain.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using shortened URLs (web links) in your email body, eg. bit.ly or goo.gl<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid adding a large number\u00a0of URLs (web links) to the email body.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Avoid using rude language or poor spelling.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nEven if you do follow the above best practices, there may still be a chance that an email you have sent ends up in the recipient\u2019s junk or spam folder. Spam filter administrators do not publicise their filtering techniques in a bid to stop spammers from circumventing spam filtering.\r\n\r\nIt is therefore advisable that if you do not receive a response within the expected time frame to follow up with the recipient via alternate means to confirm receipt of your email."},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ensure that your email is not inadvertently marked as spam by following our best practice list of words and characters to avoid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lsx_disable_title":"0","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[16763,855,857,315,277],"topics":[10459],"class_list":["post-18953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email","tag-spam-mail","tag-spam-bucket","tag-spambucket","tag-spam","tag-spam-filter","topics-spam"],"acf":[],"additional_meta":{"category_title":[{"term_id":119,"name":"Email","slug":"email","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":119,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Learn the basics and get going with our easy to set up email guides","parent":0,"count":125,"filter":"raw","term_order":"62","cat_ID":119,"category_count":125,"category_description":"Learn the basics and get going with our easy to set up email guides","cat_name":"Email","category_nicename":"email","category_parent":0}],"tag_title":[{"term_id":16763,"name":"spam mail","slug":"spam-mail","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":16763,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw","term_order":"2513"},{"term_id":855,"name":"spam bucket","slug":"spam-bucket","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":855,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw","term_order":"2736"},{"term_id":857,"name":"spambucket","slug":"spambucket","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":857,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":3,"filter":"raw","term_order":"2758"},{"term_id":315,"name":"spam","slug":"spam","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":315,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":9,"filter":"raw","term_order":"3009"},{"term_id":277,"name":"spam filter","slug":"spam-filter","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":277,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":5,"filter":"raw","term_order":"3010"}]},"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"marketing","author_link":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/author\/marketing\/","author_avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a6ea315e112423b2b955cb020fbce2b0835956c6ad85ff0f13f1db298977eaaa?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18953"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xneelo.co.za\/help-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=18953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}