[petercooper]

I thought they (Other ESPs [Exact Target, Responsys, Etc.]) debunked the idea that using phrases like "Buy Now!!!" or multiple exclamations marks increases the chance of an email getting marked as spam

I send over 150k e-mails per week and have noted that if you bundle together things like "free", ALL CAPS, and exclamation marks, you're going to impact deliverability (as measured through open rates). The key is not just one of these things but actually piling them on top of each other.

Gmail can be very touchy in throwing you to the spam folder if you end up with things like "FREE!!" going on, yet it will be fine with something like "free" or "yay!!"

Gmail's spam filtering seems to be extremely user specific though, so we might see a drop in open rates on Gmail when certain things are included in a mail, but it'll never be absolute and is very hard to objectively prove. You just get a feel for trends over the course of sending hundreds of campaigns.

[nej]

Thank you for the clarification, it makes sense.

PS. Also Peter, thank you for starting and sending out the weekly JS, Design and HTML5 newsletters, I'm subscribed and read 'em all, very resourceful.