Guide to Content Detective in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio

These are just a few examples of the many, many, many spam emails that are sent and received by email users every single day.

With the number of global email users set to grow to 4.37 billion users in 2023, the good news is that email is not going anywhere. Furthermore, Email Marketing also has a bright future, according to Campaign Monitor’s 2020 Email Marketing Benchmarks report.

In other words, email is here to stay. Unfortunately, so is email spam.

This number is unlikely to go down anytime soon. If anything, with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, Deepfake and other cutting-edge technologies that smart spammers are already leveraging to their advantage, the scope and scale of email spam will actually increase. In other words, email users can expect to get more spam in future, not less.

In such a bleak scenario, how can you as Email Marketing managers stay ahead of the ‘Spam Armageddon’? What can you do to keep the open and click-through rates high and your spam complaints low?

The answer to both questions is Content Detective.

Content Detective is a tool within Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Email Studio that can help you keep your Email Marketing messages out of your subscribers’ spam folders. By providing the means to identify potentially spammy content in emails before these emails are sent, Content Detective helps improve email deliverability.

Content Detective is like Sherlock Holmes for Email Marketing!

We hope you find this guide to Content Detective useful for your email marketing endeavors!

What is Content Detective

In simplest terms, Content Detective identifies words, phrases and patterns in email content that are likely to trigger spam filters. But it doesn’t just find problems. It also recommends resolutions to each identified problem. After running Content Detective, you can complete a single-click review of your content and edit the specific triggers identified to minimize the chances of your email being marked as spam in your recipients’ Inboxes.

This can potentially increase your open and click-through rates – two actions that can have a massive impact on the success of your Email Marketing campaign.

How to access Content Detective in Email Studio

Content Detective resides in Content Builder. To access it, select your email in Content Builder, and click on the drop-down menu next to the email. It will appear as one of the options. Select it.

It will run automatically as soon as you complete your selection.

How Content Detective works

Content Detective mirrors the logic used by spam-filtering software to scan your email content and identify spam trigger words.

Examples of trigger words that will be flagged in Content Detective include:

·         big bucks

·         !!!

·         $$$

·         all natural

·         Casino

·         Earn $

·         Earn Cash

·         Enlarge

·         Free Gift

·         Hardcore

·         Make $

·         Million email addresses

·         Money at home

·         Naughty

·         Save $

…among others. The list is continuously updated.

You can still send your email without making changes, but this is not recommended. Usually, it’s best to remove any phrases that may activate spam filters and negatively affect your email deliverability.

How to use Content Detective

To review the email with Content Detective, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Locate the email in Content Builder
• Step 2: Click the drop down arrow next to your content (on the right) and select Content Detective
• Step 3: Content Detective will scan your email content for spam triggers
• Step 4: When the scan is complete, your results and suggested corrections will be displayed.
• Step 5: Make the corrections in both HTML and Text versions. You can run the test again to confirm that you caught and made all changes.

Wrap up

Email Marketing can sometimes be a hit-and-miss endeavor. However, in an era of crowded Inboxes and smart spammers, Email Marketers must make every effort to ensure that their emails reach their subscribers’ Inboxes instead of their spam folders. And SFMC’s Content Detective provides the means to do this. Then why not use it and get the best RoI from your email campaign? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

“It’s elementary, my dear Watson!”