Why are articles listing spam words to avoid considered bad advice?

Key findings

• Context is king: Modern spam filters (like those at Gmail and Outlook) analyze the entire email, including subject line, body content, sender information, and even how recipients interact with similar emails. A single word out of context is unlikely to trigger a spam filter on its own.
• Reputation matters most: Sender reputation, including IP reputation and domain reputation, is the primary factor determining inbox placement. This is built over time through consistent sending practices, low complaint rates, and high engagement. Learn more about why emails go to spam.
• Engagement signals: Filters learn from user behavior. If recipients consistently open, click, and reply to your emails, your sender reputation improves. Conversely, low engagement or high spam complaints can harm your deliverability.
• Authentication is fundamental: Properly configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are crucial for authenticating your emails and proving you are who you say you are. A lack of proper authentication is a far greater red flag than any specific word. Understand DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
• Outdated advice: Lists of spam words often stem from a time when filters were simpler and more keyword-dependent. These lists are no longer relevant, as detailed by Mailmodo's discussion on the topic.

Key considerations

• Focus on value: Instead of obsessing over single words, concentrate on providing genuinely valuable content to your subscribers. This fosters engagement and builds a positive sender reputation.
• List hygiene: Regularly clean your email list to remove inactive or invalid addresses. Sending to engaged recipients significantly boosts your sender reputation and reduces the likelihood of hitting spam traps.
• Holistic deliverability: Adopt a comprehensive approach to email deliverability, encompassing technical setup (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), sender reputation management, content quality, and list engagement.
• Quality over quantity: Sending fewer, higher-quality emails that resonate with your audience is more effective than mass-sending emails riddled with unnecessary keyword avoidance tactics.

Key opinions

• Nonsensical word lists: Marketers frequently express amusement or frustration at lists that include common, innocuous words like 'here,' 'wife,' or 'subscribe' as spam triggers, highlighting their irrelevance.
• Contextual understanding: A key opinion is that modern filters understand context, making isolated 'spam words' meaningless. The entire message, header, and sender history contribute to filtering decisions.
• Focus on good practices: Instead of avoiding words, marketers suggest concentrating on fundamental deliverability practices, such as maintaining a healthy list and avoiding suspicious email practices, as highlighted by ActiveCampaign's advice.
• Engagement over keywords: High engagement rates and low spam complaints are seen as far more critical signals for inbox placement than the presence or absence of specific words. Understanding how spam complaints impact deliverability is key.

Key considerations

• Beyond subject lines: While subject lines are important, the overall email content, design, and sender behavior are more significant. Focus on crafting compelling messages rather than sanitizing every word.
• Audience relevance: Ensure your content is relevant and expected by your audience. Irrelevant content, regardless of keywords, can lead to low engagement and spam complaints.
• Modern filtering models: Marketers should educate themselves on how modern spam filters operate, moving beyond simple keyword matching to understand machine learning and AI-driven detection methods. SpamAssassin is no longer relevant to modern email deliverability.
• Beware of traffic-driven content: Many 'spam word' articles are published for search engine traffic, not accurate information, and marketers should be critical of their advice.

Key opinions

• Outdated concept: Experts agree that the concept of avoiding specific spam words is largely obsolete. Modern spam filtering is far more sophisticated than simple keyword matching, making these lists irrelevant.
• Reputation-centric: The core of modern deliverability lies in sender reputation. ISPs assess a sender's history, complaint rates, engagement, and authentication before any content analysis.
• Holistic filtering: Spam filters use a holistic approach, considering hundreds of signals. This includes email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), email volume, list quality, and user interaction signals. These are the true determinants of inbox placement, not individual words.
• Misguided effort: Spending time and effort on 'spam word' avoidance is seen as a wasted effort that diverts attention from truly impactful deliverability strategies, such as improving engagement and maintaining good list hygiene.

Key considerations

• Educate clients: Experts often need to re-educate marketers and businesses on the realities of modern email filtering, moving them away from outdated myths.
• Prioritize technical setup: Ensuring proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment and robust domain reputation is paramount. Learn how to boost email deliverability rates through technical solutions.
• Content quality: While single words don't trigger filters, genuinely spammy or deceptive content will. Focus on clear, honest, and valuable messaging.
• User experience: Ultimately, if recipients consistently mark your emails as spam, your deliverability will suffer. User feedback is a powerful signal. Avoid practices like purchased email lists which often lead to negative user experience and spam complaints.

Key findings

• Reputation scores: Documentation from major mailbox providers (e.g., Google, Microsoft) primarily focuses on sender reputation scores, which are derived from a composite of factors including IP and domain history, volume, and complaint rates. This is a primary filtering mechanism.
• Authentication standards: Internet standards like RFC 7208 (SPF), RFC 6376 (DKIM), and RFC 7489 (DMARC) are fundamental for email authentication. Their proper implementation signals legitimacy to receiving servers, which is heavily weighted in spam detection.
• User feedback loops: Official postmaster tools (e.g., Google Postmaster Tools) provide data on user spam complaints and engagement, indicating that direct user feedback is a significant input for filtering algorithms.
• Machine learning context: Advanced email filtering systems (as implicitly described by Google's and Microsoft's security whitepapers) leverage machine learning to analyze patterns across billions of emails, making decisions based on complex algorithms rather than simple word lists. This is explored further in Mailmodo's guide.

Key considerations

• Adherence to standards: Documentation consistently advises adhering to established email sending and authentication standards. Deviation from these is a much larger risk than any specific word choice.
• Recipient behavior focus: ISPs emphasize that recipient behavior (opens, clicks, replies, spam complaints, deletions without opening) heavily influences filtering decisions. Your email click-through rate is important here.
• Content quality over keywords: While extreme spammy content is flagged, documentation does not suggest a strict blacklist of words. Instead, it implicitly encourages high-quality, relevant content that genuinely engages subscribers.
• Trust and reputation building: The overarching theme in documentation is building and maintaining a trustworthy sender reputation, which is a continuous process of good sending practices and positive recipient interactions.