“I have been told that if I put a special character in the subject line, like the registered trademark symbol (®) or an emoji, it’s true that the email will go to spam. Is this correct?”
That is not true, but it’s a common misconception that touches on a more complex topic.
First, it’s essential to distinguish between an email being marked as spam and being filtered into a promotional or bulk folder (like Gmail’s ‘Promotions’ tab). Users sometimes confuse the two, but the difference is significant.
- Spam: This means the email has been identified as unsolicited mail. This is always undesirable.
- Promotional/Bulk Mail: This is a legitimate email delivered to a user’s inbox, but an email client has algorithmically identified it as commercial or mass-sent, rather than personal correspondence.
A special character in the subject line, on its own, should not cause your email to be marked as spam.
It also shouldn’t be the sole reason for being filtered as promotional mail. However, email services use many different and often non-public criteria to make this distinction. Their algorithms try to identify patterns that separate personal communication from marketing emails.
Because of this, using elements like emojis can indeed increase the ‘score’ that flags an email as promotional. But it is always a combination of many factors, and a single character will not decide the outcome on its own.