Dear Hendry,

Can links on email ads reduce the deliverability rate? Do spam blocking filters block emails with links as they automatically perceive the email to be spam?

Mark Strobel

Mark,

Spam blocking filters don’t work the same. But, generally the occurrence of links in the content doesn’t indicate that the email is spam.

However, some content filtering software or scripts do check the most common URLs in the body content and automatically increase the spam score of the message — the likelihood of a message to be considered spam.

So, to answer your first question, URLs in body content could possibly affect your deliverability rate, but spam blocking filters don’t block emails only because they have links in the message content.

Also remember that email deliverability depends on a myriad of other factors. Message content is just one of them. Many email marketers think that if you avoid the most common spam trap words or phrases such as “free”, “business opportunity”, etc., you are more or less safe.

Nothing is further from the truth.

Besides content, email deliverability also depends on the sender, ISP reputation, email authentication, ISP and third-party filters, software settings, internal/external blacklists, and a bunch of other factors.

Make sure you don’t spend your time too much on things that matter less.

Good luck.