Berman says spam filters ignore your subject line
A six item checklist posted with no data behind it, and copy comes last on the list.
Alex Berman posted a list of what he says spam filters actually care about, and the subject line is not on it. His six items are a missing profile picture, a blank name field, account age, send volume on day one, links in the first email, and images in the signature. Copy, in his ordering, comes after all of that.
"Spam filters don't care about your subject line," he wrote, before telling readers to "Fix those first. Then worry about the copy."
Spam filters don't care about your subject line.
Fix those first. Then worry about the copy.
What the post does and does not give you
There is no data attached. Berman does not say how many sends the list came from, which providers he tested against, or how he separated one factor from another. Treat it as one operator's pre-send checklist rather than a tested ranking of filter weights. Nothing in the post establishes that these six sit in that order, or that they matter more than the copy they are being placed above.
What the list has going for it is cost. Every item is either a profile setting or a sending decision, and all of them are settled before the first email leaves the mailbox. Adding a picture and a real name to a sending account takes a minute. Removing a link from email one and stripping the image out of a signature block takes about as long. Account age and day-one volume are the two that need planning, because they are decisions you make in the first week of a new mailbox and cannot undo later.
That is also the honest reading of the post. It is an argument about sequencing, not a claim that copy is irrelevant. Senders spend a lot of time rewriting subject lines while leaving the mechanical stuff at defaults, and Berman is pointing at the defaults.
For people sending, do the cheap fixes because they are cheap, not because the list is proven. If you are blaming placement on a subject line while a fresh mailbox with no profile picture is pushing volume from day one, you are debugging the wrong layer. Berman has spent the week arguing against the doom posts too, telling readers earlier that the cold email funeral content is engagement farming.