Nov
30
By George Bilbrey
VP & GM Delivery Assurance Solutions
More than 80 percent of email delivery failures happen because of email reputation. If the sender's reputation is less than stellar, the email will get blocked or filtered. Call me crazy, but that makes email reputation important to get right! Most companies, however, do not have a clue what their email reputation is, or where to start looking for it.
Now, that answer is easy: go to www.senderscore.org. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Nov
19
By Tom Sather, Email Deliverability Consultant
It's depressing but true: there is more spam being sent than ever before.
In fact, our ISP and other receiver contacts report a tripling in the amount of spam coming across their networks in the past six months. This volume, combined with the increased volume of permission-based email typically seen in the fourth quarter means that overtaxed networks may process email slower as the volume backs up the systems.
As a result, your campaigns may generate higher-than-usual number of soft bounces including 421 and 451 SMTP error codes, as well as connection time outs. In particular, these system time outs could become more common as we move further into the high-volume holiday season (which kicked off with Halloween and will intensify after Thanksgiving).
What's more, ISPs are prioritizing email traffic based on complaints, bounces, and other data to allow senders with better reputations to have their email delivered first. Once again, it's all about reputation.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Oct
26
By Ken Takahashi
VP, Corporate and International Development
On Tuesday I was invited to participate on a panel at the ClickZ Email Marketing Conference on the topic of outsourcing email sending vs. keeping that chore in-house. It was a very interesting conversation that surfaced some surprising discoveries.
The main takeaways were that many marketers ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Oct
12
By George Bilbrey
VP & GM Delivery Assurance Solutions
It's official. The endless hours spent tweaking your content to beat spam filters are not necessary after all. When it comes to email blocking and filtering, reputation -- not content -- can be blamed 83% of the time.
We have long held this to be true, and now can back up our opinions and experiences with real numbers. A study we released this week that shows that sender reputation causes 77% of delivery failures, while an additional 6% are triggered by the reputation of domains included in the email content. ...
Categories: Email Deliverability
Sep
19
By Tom Sather
ISP Relations and Deliverability Consultant
Even the most diligent, best-practices-based email marketer will see marketing and transactional emails land in the bulk folder at email providers like Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo. This is generally caused by high consumer complaints. And we can all kind of get behind this idea, right? If consumers complain about your email then maybe you aren't really following best practices.
Except that we also know that a high proportion of consumers use the "this is spam" button as a proxy for unsubscribing from legitimate email - up to 37% according to a recent Return Path survey. And this, rightfully, annoys marketers. They don't want to be penalized if subscribers have simply grown tired of their offering.
So, it is exciting to see the recent news that Microsoft is planning to add an unsubscribe button in the header of its emails. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Sep
06
By Ken Takahashi
VP Corporate Development
Last week, Dylan Boyd wrote an article about bouncebacks for Media Post's Email Insider. The article had some good points about the impact of bounces on your email program, though it left me feeling the need to clarify a few differentiators between bounce rates and delivery rates, and the overall reasons bounces occur. I wrote a response that ran in today's Online Media Daily. To learn more about bounce handling and delivery impacts, read on, and let me know if you have any questions.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Aug
29
By George Bilbrey
VP & GM Delivery Assurance Solutions
Today's Email Insider column details three steps legit marketers should take to get delivered to Hotmail. It leaves off one of the most obvious -- Return Path's Sender Score Certified. Hotmail - and more than 150K other domains -- use Sender Score Certified as a "safelist" to separate reputable senders from bad ones. If delivery to Hotmail is important to you ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Aug
21
By Ken Takahashi
VP, Corporate Development
Emails cross borders everyday, yet most marketers remain blissfully unaware of this fact. While ignoring your international constituency may not be hurting you (yet! ... or maybe it already is), paying more attention could definitely help your response rates and start to open new, exciting markets.
One note of caution: be sure to work with an attorney who is skilled in overseas laws regarding privacy, data collection and email. Many countries have passed legislation that is very different to what you are used to here in the U.S., so you'll need to understand what is and isn't okay when considering exporting your marketing efforts.
We recommend these 7 steps to start exploring the world beyond U.S. inboxes ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jul
28
By George Bilbrey
VP & GM Delivery Assurance Solutions
The research brief we released earlier this week on email reputation has created quite a stir -- and not all of it accurate. Stories like the ones here, here, and here report that 97% of email is spam, sent from hijacked computers. This is not necessarily the case. For one, we were not talking about the share of spam out there -- were were talking about the percent of IP addresses likely sending spam. What our research showed is that 97% of IP addresses sending email have terrible reputations. Are they spammers? Most likely. Are they hijacking computers? Maybe. Will they earn inbox delivery? No.
The point of our study is that of those sending high volumes of commercial email, most have terrible Sender Scores (our gauge of reputation) ....
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jul
25
By George Bilbrey
VP & GM Delivery Assurance Solutions
Ninety-seven percent of the email senders out there have terrible reputations. They aren't just suspect, they aren't just a little bit bad ... they are in the bottom of the barrel -- scoring less than 30 according to our Sender Score Reputation Monitor. Sender Scores less than 30 are highly likely to get blocked by email receivers. Scores higher than 70 are most likely to get delivered -- yet not even 1% of mailers make that cut.
So what does this mean for the average commercial emailer? Reputation is the key to inbox delivery. You need to know what your Sender Score is - think of it like your credit score for email. Then you need to ....
Categories: Email Deliverability
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