Let me talk about more myths I want to demystify. The first one- sending plain text messages to subscribers is good for your deliverability, inbox placement rate and open rates. Rubbish! I don't know where this myth came from, I don't know why it persisted, sending a plain text email has zero effects on any of those things. The biggest part of this myth that needs to be busted is that emails composed only in plain text receive better open rates that those composed in HTML. Well, first off, how would you know? Because if it's plain text, you can't measure the open rate. Also, the ISP doesn't care if it's got pictures in it or it doesn't, they don't care one way or the other. What I can tell you is that plain text emails sometimes work better and you can get higher click through rates with them, because people see them in their preview panes and they're like "oh, that actually looks like a mistake", or one of the best ones I ever saw was sent by a travel company which basically was an out of office that predicted when you would out of office and where you'd be. So they might get a good response, but they're not going to help you with your deliverability.
Second - If I get recipients to click links within my email, the ISPs will see that I am sending to engaged users and therefore my deliverability will be improved. Our Head of Compliance went through the service agreements of all the major ISPs, and found that their own rules prevent them from looking at clicks in email. They can't track where you click on in an email as a consumer - they don't know where you go after clicking on an email, so getting a higher click through rate is not going to help your deliverability. Getting a higher open rate shows engagement, getting people to reply to your email shows engagement, both of these will help your deliverability. So if you are sending emails from a "do not reply" address, that is going to hurt your deliverability. You want those replies and, obviously if someone replies you need to be able to manage that, but you want people to reply or move it from one folder to another, that shows engagement.
Last but not least, subject lines should not exceed a certain size, nor should they contain special characters or certain words. Rubbish! Currently, there's a movie called "xXx: The Return of Xander Cage." I defy you to promote that movie without putting "xXx" in your subject line. Not going to be a problem, and neither is including xXx in your body copy. If you are following good sending practices, your ISP is not going to care what's in it. As long as you're doing everything else right, special characters and certain words aren't going to get you blocked by an ISP.
