Ensuring Your Survey Invitation Isn’t Flagged as Spam

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With the rise of Bayesian filters, most email users are seeing fewer spam messages in their Inboxes. You want to make sure that your survey invitation and reminder emails aren't flagged as spam, which would artificially lower your response rate.

Because spam filtering programs are constantly changing, it is best to send your draft email invitation to the personal email addresses of friends and coworkers simply to make sure all receive it. Be careful when discussing survey incentives in the email, as words and phrases such as "free" and "act now" are more likely to get your invitation classified as spam. Hectic punctuation - ALL CAPS, lots of exclamations!!!, dollar $ign$, L33t sp34k - are also more likely to get your message flagged.

Another important aspect of spam for U.S. organizations is the CAN-SPAM Act, which requires three types of compliance for organizations sending commercial email messages to organizations with which they have no relationship. (In other words, messages sent to customers do not fall under the jurisdiction of this act.) The three types:

1. Unsubscribe compliance - Each email contains an obvious and working method for the recipient to unsubscribe. All opt-out requests are processed within 10 days. The suppression lists of opt-outs are not mailed to.
2. Content compliance - The email From field is accurate, the subject field relates to the body of the email message and is not misleading, and the body contains a valid physical mailing address for the organization sending the message. (Surveys on sexual topics must be labeled in the subject header as containing sexually-explicit content.)
3. Sending-behavior compliance - Your email messages cannot be sent through an open relay and cannot contain a false header. Almost all hosted survey software applications comply with this. Additionally, your message cannot be sent to an email address that was harvested (downloaded and parsed) from web pages.

The penalty for failure to comply with these items ranges from a misdemeanor charge to an aggravated offense, depending on the size and scope of the offense. Where appropriate, you should consult a lawyer or review the CAN-SPAM Act in more detail to guarantee your email is in compliance.

What tools have you found helpful for writing email messages that will get past spam filters?