Is it safe to send html emails without any header elements (h1, h2, h3, h4)

Question

I'm finding it very hard to style multiple header elements (h1, h2, h3) with or without links. My html email has headers with multiple colors and styles and hotmail and outlook 2010 behave very badly with them. I was wondering if it is safe to use 'p' elements for titles, where I can have more control. Will the email have a negative or spam effect in any email client/provider?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

It may slightly increase your spam score to use a large font in a <p> tag. Unusually large text in the message body is a commonly used trigger for spam filters.

• A general rule of thumb is to not use a font size greater than ~3 (~12 pt) in a <p> tag, to minimize spam filtering.

• Using header tags for unusually large fonts is a safer alternative and is less likely to increase your spam score.

• Using images for large header text is another alternative to minimize spam filtering.

Here's a good overview on how to avoid spam filters.

Example:

Here is an example header that illustrates the spam filter algorithm used by DigiLink's SpamAssassin tool. In this example, declaring a font size of 3 and up adds 0.3 to the risk scoring, where total scores of 4 and greater are marked as spam. In this example, using an h1 header with the default font sizing would not trigger the score increase.