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Best Practices for Sending Person-to-Person Email

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This article provides best practices that can help you avoid having your legitimate person-to-person email messages flagged as spam by increasingly strict and sophisticated spam filters.

If you need recommendations for sending email to many recipients, see Best Practices for Sending Emails to Many Recipients. If you receive a bounce message when sending an email, see our list of Common Email Bounce Messages for more information.

Before You Begin

For more information on prerequisite terminology, see Rackspace Email Support Terminology.

For a video tutorial, see Rackspace Email - Spam Flags: Best Sending Practices.

Best practices

To ensure that the person-to-person emails that you send through the Rackspace mail system reach their destination, use the following best practices. Most reputable mail providers also provide their own recommendations, and we encourage you to read those as well.

Basic Technical Trust
Even for person-to-person email, your domain must be authenticated. Setting up SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) verifies to the receiving server that the email truly came from your domain, dramatically increasing trust and deliverability.

Message format

  • Make your message layout clear and simple. Avoid overly dense, complex, or poorly constructed HTML. The most common spam indicator is broken or non-standard HTML (e.g., missing or empty tags, poor formatting), often created by older content programs. Simple formatting like bolding, bullet points, and simple color changes is generally acceptable.
  • If you send HTML email, ensure that it is properly constructed. Items like missing or empty tags, poor formatting, and nonstandard conventions are spam indicators.
  • Do not use invisible web-based tracking tools in your emails, and do not insert active components (such as JavaScript, ActiveX, and plug-ins) in your message. If you need rich media content, link to a media-rich page on your website.
  • Use a mail client that provides features such as providing HTML and text versions of the message content, correctly constructed and formatted email headers, and adherence to specifications for sending email.

Links

  • Do not use links that contain IP addresses. All reputable sites on the Internet use domain names to identify themselves. Using IP addresses is a trigger for spam filters.
  • If you link to other companies’ sites in your message content, ensure that they are reputable sites. Providing links to disreputable sites in your message content will cause your email to be marked as spam.
  • Spammers use abbreviated URLs to mask the destination of the link, which causes spam filters to flag messages with shortened URLs as spam.
    • Note:** The reputation of sites or companies referenced in your email is determined by the whole of the Internet community.

Word choice

Avoid the following spam triggers:

  • Excessive or unusual punctuation (especially exclamation points (!) and question marks(?))
  • Capitalization of all letters (LIKE THIS)
  • Words such as urgent, free, and guaranteed
  • Spaces between every letter in a word, such as H e l l o
  • Misleading Subject Lines: Ensure the subject line accurately reflects the content. Spam filters are highly sensitive to deceptive subject lines meant to trick a recipient into opening the email.
  • Use personalized greetings and salutations. For example, use “Hey Bob” instead of “Hey” or “To Whom It May Concern.” Generic greetings make your content more likely to appear as unsolicited mail to spam filters.
  • Do not include disclaimers such as "This is not spam" or claims of legal compliance in your message. Legitimate communication does not need to advertise its legitimacy.
  • Use conversational language. Message content that follows a consistent limited verbiage or template will appear to be computer-generated content and will be flagged as spam. Spellings like “str@nge” or “g00gle” in your emails will classify the emails as spam.
  • Do not overtly reference topics that usually indicate spam. For example, highly recognized brands, medications, sexual innuendo, drugs, and financial schemes are easily recognizable as topics contained in spam. An email that mentions topics considered spam will cause your email to be marked as spam, even if the intent of the message is legitimate.

Attachments

  • Attachments are a common way of distributing viruses, making filters increasingly strict about attachments. Blocking zip file attachments is a prolific example of this.
  • Avoid attaching files to your messages. Since attachments are a common way of distributing viruses, filters are increasingly strict. Instead, use shareable links to content stored in cloud file sharing services (e.g., Microsoft OneDrive with Rackspace, Google Drive, or Dropbox).
  • If you need to send attachments, use attachment names that are simple and specific, and spell them correctly. Oddly named or spelled attachments are a common way of transporting viruses.

References

Updated 13 days ago