The ultimate goal when sending a message is for that message to be delivered.

Email service providers employ a spam filter to evaluate whether incoming messages meet a set of standards. This evaluation is performed prior to any email message landing in an inbox.

Sending messages from our system

The best practices that are detailed below (and in other Deliverability articles):

• should be adhered to when your organization sends messages through the Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) system.
• better ensure that you remain in compliance with Higher Logic's "send" policies.
• increase the likelihood of your messages being delivered to your intended recipients.
• improve your sender reputation and help it remain positive.

Best practices for messages

Below are some best practices that you should employ when creating and sending messages. These recommendations give your messages the best chance of being delivered to the intended recipients.

• Avoid excessive punctuation, capitalization, and hyphens in the body and subject line of your message.
• Avoid using third-party link-shortening tools such as bit.ly and tinyurl. A lot of spammers use these free tools in an attempt to hide their spam links; so, many email clients now flag these types of links.
• Avoid "exposed" URLs (i.e., simply pasting a full link in the message); instead, "embed" your URLs in text and images. 
• Avoid common spam trigger words and phrases in the body and subject line. If possible, avoid words such as "free!" and phrases such as "work from home." Ultimately, text and phrases that sound like something a spammer or scammer would say should be avoided whenever possible. Use your discretion; simply including the word "free" doesn't automatically mean your message won't be delivered.
• Avoid too little text in the body of your message. This is often the case when there are an excessive number of images. Spam filters tend to flag email messages that have too little text. Higher Logic supports (and encourages) the use of images, but encourages you have a balance of images and text in your email messages.
• Include alt-text for all of your images. This is especially important if you include a lot of images. This helps you comply with accessibility standards and gives spam filters additional text to evaluate.
• Avoid risky HTML elements such as JavaScript, iFrames, and embedded content. If you want to share this type of content, provide a link to it instead. An embedded video in a message is a huge red flag for spam filters. Instead, consider taking a screenshot of the video, insert that image into your message, and link that image to the video.

Related articles

Use the information in this article in conjunction with the "deliverability" information in:

• Deliverability Best Practices
• Deliverability Tasks