Message Body
The message body is the part of the message that is most familiar to both the sender and the receiver. And, although receivers primarily base the reputation score on the message header, there are two main components of the message body that you must look at closely in order to maintain a good reputation.
To determine reputation, email receivers focus on:
- Links (Anything found with the <A HREF> tag
- Images (Anything found within the <IMG SRC> tag
It didn’t take long for email receivers to catch on to the fact that the primary role of a spammer was to send billions of pieces of unsolicited email containing links to sell things for a profit. As an anti-spam measure, email receivers now analyze messages that trip a complaint threshold for links contained in those messages. Receivers then put those links on a blacklist and block any messages that contain them. If you are using an ESP, it is important for you to make sure that the tracking links that the ESP inserts in its messages contain your domain name and not the domain name of the ESP to ensure that your message isn’t mistakenly blocked by email receivers.
Many email marketers erroneously overlook assigning their own host name for tracking links. This could lead to someone else’s poor reputation negatively impacting their campaigns. Using an ESP, like Listrak, will give you an easy way to define your links prior to sending out your emails.
The second component of the message body that may potentially lead to deliverability problems deals with image tags. Many email marketers use an image hosting service offered by their ESP or they outsource through a content distribution network like Akamai. While these services can be extremely helpful to email marketers, it is important to make sure that the host names are branded with your domain name and not the domain name of the hosting provider as you might inadvertently be labeled with someone’s poor reputation.
