{"id":4536,"date":"2017-07-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/dont-play-hide-and-seek-how-to-keep-your-email-code-clean\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T15:35:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:35:38","slug":"dont-play-hide-and-seek-how-to-keep-your-email-code-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/dont-play-hide-and-seek-how-to-keep-your-email-code-clean","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Play Hide and Seek: Why You Should Keep Your Email Code Clean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hide and seek may be a fun childhood game, but if you hide content in your code, you may run the risk of hurting your deliverability. And while there are some very important practices you should focus on implementing, like authentication, opt-in, and permission, content and code elements are two of the elements of deliverability you can fully control.<\/p>\n

Plus, clean code and content is critical for your user experience too, whether it\u2019s making sure your email renders correctly or that your message gets its point across\u2014so your subscribers click.<\/p>\n

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Make it to the inbox, not the spam folder<\/h2>\n

Identify issues that might keep you from the inbox and get actionable help for how to fix them with Litmus Spam Testing.<\/p>\n

LEARN MORE ABOUT SPAM TESTING \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

It happened to us!<\/h2>\n

For Litmus Live 2014, we went above and beyond by implementing a video background in email. <\/a>It\u2019s our biggest email campaign each year, designed to build a ton of excitement before our event\u2014and drive ticket sales. But one thing we didn\u2019t count on: Our code comments accidentally triggered a few spam filters. The reason?<\/p>\n

A comment that read:<\/p>\n

\nYES. HTML5 VIDEO BACKGROUND. \nIN AN EMAIL. BELIEVE IT. \nBRINGING SEXY BACK TO EMAIL LIKE TIMBERLAKE DID TO POP.\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
What started as a joke intended for our code-savvy audience of email designers and developers who often peek at our code became a deliverability risk, all because of the word “sexy” hidden in our code.<\/p>\n
Keep your code clean<\/h2>\n
Keeping your code clean is an important step (though not the only one) to making sure you always reach the inbox. That\u2019s because spammy emails tend to have additional formatting to more easily hide the bad things which make them readable and easy for humans to click on something they shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Poorly written HTML means the spam filter may interpret your message as something it\u2019s not, and may send you to the spam folder just to be safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cDirty\u201d code can also dramatically increase the size of your email<\/a>. This makes it much longer to load and can impact your subscriber experience, decreasing engagement. Make sure your email is less than 102kb to prevent clipping in Gmail Also at scale, large message sizes may impact processing times at your email service provider (ESP), and in turn, impacting your sending rates.<\/p>\n
And clean code isn\u2019t just important for deliverability\u2014it\u2019s important when it comes to making sure your email renders correctly, too.<\/p>\n
Double check these things to make sure your code stays clean, decreasing the chance of landing in the spam folder:<\/p>\n