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Everyone has their own method and steps they follow when creating a killer email template, but you may be putting the cart before the horse if you are making this simple spam testing mistake.

Lorem Ipsum is the red-headed step child of spam testing

You might think of it as just “filler text,” but Lorem Ipsum can cause your email to get tangled in the sticky webs of some spam filters.

You heard us right, testing your email template with filler text can cause your email to fail and create false results. This could cause you to troubleshoot spam problems for hours when in reality the problem doesn’t exist!

What is Lorem Ipsum?

Never heard of Lorem Ipsum? It’s a passage of “dummy text” that is used to simulate what content might look like. It’s written in Latin, which means it won’t distract the reader from the “look” of the page. Many email template builders use Lorem Ipsum to simulate the look of actual content in their templates.

The Elusive False Negative of Spam Testing Results

We tested our responsive template as you see it on our blog (with filler text) and then again with text from Wikipedia about the Star-Nosed Mole. The Lorem Ipsum version failed in 4 filters, while the Wikipedia text version failed only in AOL. I’m not sure what caused it to fail in that filter; that’s a question for another blog.

Moral of the story: Make sure you take out all of your Lorem Ipsum before spam testing your emails and email templates.

Cheers and happy testing!