Here’s a screenshot of Gmail’s spam filter protecting me from yet another highly targeted, benefit-driven email that tugs at my heartstrings. Yes, that was sarcasm. For God’s sake, it’s in Russian.

15 years ago, people were thrilled to get an email advertising a credit card offer. It was such a pleasure to have anything at all in their inbox. Today, things are very different. It’s a lot harder to get people to read your email because we get so much of it.

What’s so perplexing about spammers is that they haven’t updated their email copywriting. They’re really not trying at all.

While I hate spammers and want to see them all fined and thrown in jail, their work does provide some rather obvious lessons for people who want to write emails that aren’t seen as spam.

Let’s look at some of the spam I’ve received, and see how it could be improved.

Wrong language

In the picture above, the problem is that the email is in Russian (or something like that). Since I can’t read Russian, it wasn’t effective. Isn’t that obvious? Even if they don’t know what country I live in, English is a much better guess.

Typos

One email has this subject:

“1000 singleladies from Russia are online now, have ineterst?”

The first thing I notice is the obvious typos and bad grammar. Anyone who would write a subject like this is either extremely sloppy or just not smart. I instantly think “spam” when I see something like this.

Suspicious offers

One email reads:

“I am a pretty woman, and I wish to become a pen pal (by email or Skype) of a handsome and clever guy, interested in further real dates!

I have registered my profile at: http://s-best-toprussgirl.biz?idAff=5″

This seems really suspicious. If you don’t know who this person is, you have to assume it’s a mass mailing. And it doesn’t seem likely that someone would try to find dates with a mass mailing, especially when they don’t even mention their location. Also notice that the URL contains an affiliate ID, which doesn’t make sense unless they’re trying to sell something.

Non-compelling copy

One email simply says:

“New products everyday at our chemists.”

That’s not enough to get someone interested. No one is looking for random new drugs. What drugs do they actually have? Be specific.

No content, only unsubscribe info

One email contains no content at all, just information on how to unsubscribe:

“Unsubscribe | Manage Subscriptions | Privacy Policy

To stop ALL email from ABCNews Newsletters, click here to remove yourself from our lists.

This email was sent by: ABCNews, 7 WEST 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.”

With no content, what is the point of the email? They’re actually doing something right in that they’re giving you a clear call to action. They want you to click the unsubscribe link so they can confirm that your email address is valid, and then sell it to more spammers. I’m sure that ABCNews would not send emails with no content, so it reeks of spam.

Nonsensical content

One email says:

“You are doing too much of sport, support your organism.”

Emails that don’t make sense are a clear sign of spam.

Emails from a name you recognize, but it’s not really them

I got one email from “Cummuta Debt to Wealth.” They’re taking advantage of all the Jon Cummuta debt-elimination ads I hear on the radio. You get this email and think, “Oh, I know him.” But you need to ask, “How does he know me?” If he doesn’t, it must be spam.

Comment spam

When you look at blog comment spam, it gets even worse than the emails.

Comment spammers have a strong incentive to leave decent comments. A blog’s spam filter will catch pretty much all the spam, so it won’t be seen by anyone other than the blog owner, as they check their spam queue for anything that was caught by mistake. But if a comment is just good enough to be approved, it becomes visible to lots of people. Despite this incentive, comment spammers do a much worse job than email spammers.

Here is a typical piece of comment spam:

“cx10neun25ii2pjyt
jnfcaabh rjirbzx
http://ebeslxo.com
rgvgtmjp lluld
http://kwgianogj.com
fypekbj nueyidrnf
http://bckfosvbz.com
taqggjn nxcmo
http://swrobez.com”

What about this comment is going to prompt the blog owner to approve it? Does it add value to the discussion?

Here’s another one:

“J1UT33 wmoalzbwbmai, [url=http://khpnygfptcqxu.com/]khpnygfpcqxu[/url], [link=http://xymooxdncmbly.com/]xymooxncmbly[/link], http://zcxbvevjjvwzt.com/”

Again, why is the blog owner supposed to want to approve this? No one is going to let something like this through.

The next one is better:

“These same was depicted spironolactone story about norvasc heating. Covenant was onspicuous case atrovent stood motionless keflex was pondering pepcid rrangement. That devilish guard during temovate these images fioricet the lock keppra anemic.

Nikolaevna dropped the poker ortho any learning tussionex reared.

Peering more flying just cardura bed went plavix sorceries and aldara visitors. Your interlocut evidently from fluoxetine and merely sumatriptan fellow. What happened him such steroids soon discovered adderall the. Cole cried lost the naproxen objected the evoxac bookworm. Roman authority fearing barman depakote some pot amoxicillin lairs. March possessed everybody gasped sibutramine erlioz before loratadine ith whom bactroban beholder. Knowing that theatre with didrex though according accupril had fed allegra terrace. Things remain cut out phenergan complained confidenti naltrexone countries. Morris resumed ollonovich from suprax paper began motrin officers. Oliver paced foist the roxicet drove off coumadin with grief doxazosin unequally. Sowship himself appeared from hydrochlorothiazide the braggart accupril soldier with esomeprazole caused. Bower built her acquaintan nasacort storming the renova the decor buspirone typescript.”

This one at least contains real words, but they’re in a random order. No one would approve this comment.

Scrapers

Scrapers are people who steal other people’s content and post it on their own blog. It’s a lot easier for them to put up content when they don’t actually have to write it. The problem is that it violates copyright law.

Some scrapers will take just a short excerpt of a post, claiming that it falls under the definition of “fair use.” That’s what happened in this trackback I received:

“Why The Financial Crisis Will Be Harmless, Until It Kills Us All : $700 Billion Bailout Plan | the700billionbailoutplan.org/why-the-financial-crisis-will-be-harmless-until-it-kills-us-all | IP: 67.225.196.41

[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]

KelOmar | kelomar@noxhnou.com | google.com | IP: 82.208.48.225″

They posted an excerpt of my post and linked to it. They linked to it both because they think that makes it OK to steal, and because they wanted their trackback to appear on my blog. It might be hard to get them to take the post down, but it’s easy enough to delete the trackback so they don’t get traffic from my blog.

Made up news

One person left this comment:

“OMG. Did you hear? Russia attacks USA…
More info here: hotusanewxy.blogspot.com”

After I ran down to my bomb shelter, I discovered that the news was not true. You might get some curiosity clicks this way, but people don’t like being lied to.

URL points to a page with no content

On my Automatic Blog Post Rehasher post, someone left this comment:

“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.”

OK, that’s clever. They could have said a bit more, but that comment is good enough. But it went straight to my spam queue, most likely because other people reported them for spamming. When I checked their URL, I saw that it went to a page with no content. If it had gone to a decent page, the comment would have been OK.

The same person left this comment on my Todoodlist post:

“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.”

A halfway decent comment, but I couldn’t approve it because of their URL.

Comment on an unrelated post

Someone left this comment:

“Many times you’ve been thinking that you don’t like any of T-Mobile phones.Or probably you travel abroad a lot? And met difficulties trying to use your phone overseas?

From now and forever you can use your phone in all networks an with all operators. Just buy an unlocked cell phone and enjoy the freedom of communication and use the newest cell phones”

This comment is too much of a sales pitch, but the real problem is that it was left on a post that had nothing to do with cell phones (it was about bloggers having their ducks in a row). If it had been left on a relevant post, it would have had a much better chance (though I still would have deleted it).

One-liners

Someone left a comment saying:

“Its Good to read what you have to say.”

Sorry, that’s not enough of a comment. You’ll have to promote your Australian hypnosis business on another blog.

Very short comments can be OK, but they should be a little more specific, and preferably from someone you know not to be a spammer.

Vague compliments

The Australian hypnosis commenter also left this comment about the tea-loving caterpillars:

“This post has helped break my creativity with a project i\’m working on, thanks.”

Close, but no cigar. It was just a bit too obvious that they hadn’t read the post, plus I remembered them from the previous spam comment.

An important anti-spam tip

If you get an email that might be spam, don’t click the links. But if you must click them, at least check them first. One common spam technique is to include a link that doesn’t point to where it appears to, like this:

http://www.google.com

You see that link and think it’s OK to click it, but it could take you to another site that does bad stuff to your computer. What you want to do is hover your mouse pointer over the link. In most browsers, the actual URL will appear in the lower left corner of the browser window. If the real URL doesn’t match the URL displayed, don’t click the link.

Who writes spam anyway?

I just don’t get spammers. Don’t they know how easy it would be to make their spam look legitimate? They’re really going out of their way to do a bad job. I guess that’s a good thing, because it makes it easier for spam filters to catch them. But it seems like there would be a huge opportunity for decent spam copywriters…

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