401 Phrases That Will Make Your Email Look Like Spam

For the past three years, I've been writing a free weekly newsletter where I critique your sales emails for free. After looking at several hundred sales emails, I was amazed at how many of them contained well-known SPAM words and phrases.

I only recently figured out exactly what's going on. The Internet is full of email marketing gurus who are giving people out-of-date and ill-conceived advice about sales and marketing emails.

For example, here's an article from an email marketing consulting firm recommending the use of "Save", "Deals", "Sale" and "Savings." Why? Because a bunch of newsletters from online retailers contained those words! All four words are huge SPAM flags.

An here's an article from an email marketing guru recommending the use of "Free", "Instantly", "New" and "Bargain." Why? Because some marketing guru in the 1960s said those words worked well in magazine ads! Again, all four are SPAM flags.

So, as a service to everybody and for the record, here is a comprehensive list of ALL the SFW words and phrases that are likely to land your email in the SPAM folder: