I like to browse through my spam folder every once in a while. It’s the best way I know to learn “what not to do” for my own email newsletters.
I stumbled upon a pretty interesting piece of spam this morning (click thumbnail to zoom in—I censored the naughty stuff). It was a perfectly legit HTML email newsletter that a spammer stole from Men’s Health. They took the Men’s Health logo, design, code, and content, and left it all intact. Then they just replaced the lead story with their own “pharmaceutical” promotion. They even threw in an eye-catching thumbnail. Scary.