Jul
21
By George Bilbrey
President
Today Return Path releases a new Email Deliverability Benchmark Report. It's been a few years since we published this kind of data and the big news is that the news hasn't changed much in that time. On average, commercial email is still being blocked at a rate of about 20%.
There are a number of reasons that deliverability is still a crisis for email marketers, and we outline those reasons in the report, which you can download here. But one reason I'd like to talk about here is that the changes that are required to improve deliverability are sometimes perceived as difficult for a company to implement. Not because they are, I would contend, but because internal complacency can be a roadblock to marshaling even the small amount of resources needed. And in today's economy that isn't totally surprising. It's hard to justify, for example, spending time and energy on fixing a sub-optimal unsubscribe process when activities that are perceived as having a bigger revenue impact are fighting for space at the top of the to-do list.
But I would argue that the time, money and energy spent on improving deliverability IS a revenue-generating activity ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jul
17
By J.D. Falk
Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services
This week, MAAWG published A Look at Consumers' Awareness of Email Security and Practices (available from maawg.org.) This research paper is based on a survey of real email users -- just like our friends, spouses, grandparents, children -- the actual humans who use email and don't want to have to understand the technical or social underpinnings. It was not a survey of MAAWG members, or conducted by MAAWG members; the intent was to get a true picture. In conversations between senders and ISPs, often with Return Path helping to facilitate, everyone's always trying to figure out what recipients do or don't want; finally, this survey gives us some answers.
To read the press and blog response, it sounds like they've concluded that spam is a complete success and everyone should start spamming to get rich -- but at Return Path we rely on the data, and the data tells a much richer story than a 140-character Twitter paraphrase of the press release ever could.
First, one very humbling realization for all of us ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jul
15
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
I was speaking at a webinar this week and the moderator said, "Stephanie, we have 30 seconds. How can marketers avoid being filtered as spam?!"
No pressure, right? Luckily, I talk fast!
I responded with something like this:
"Reaching the inbox is the only way you can earn a response. So it's pretty important to focus on this.
"Avoiding the spam filters is simple in concept: You must be welcome in the inbox - and you must maintain an ongoing reputation for being welcome in the inbox. The minute you bore me, or abuse my trust or send something irrelevant, you are spamming me.
"It's simple in concept, complex in practice. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jun
17
By J.D. Falk
Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services
Over the past five years, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) meetings have brought together many of the world's experts in email spam, botnets, cybercrime, and related issues. Last week, 270 participants from more than 19 countries met in Amsterdam, in The Netherlands.
Like nearly all computer security conferences, there's a strict policy that information shared within MAAWG is confidential -- so, unlike most marketing conferences, you won't see anyone twittering or blogging the highlights. (We got permission to post this.) A few participants reported on Facebook that there was a fascinating session about "[REDACTED]" (sic), but no other details have been made available. This difference in style shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has spent time with ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jun
16
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
It's no surprise that email marketers are often confused about the difference between a bounce rate and an inbox deliverability rate. Most email broadcast systems in the U.S. and Europe report something called "delivered." It's usually a pretty high number - like 98% or 93%. And your ESP would like you to judge them on that number, because it's really high, and it's easy for them to be confident that it will stay high.
The problem is that most vendors define "delivered" as the inverse of your bounce rate - the number of records on your file that either no longer exist (a hard bounce) or are having temporary delivery failure (a soft bounce), perhaps due to an out of office reply or a full mailbox or some glitch in the ISP server.
Most marketers who keep their lists clean and have good permission practices have a bounce rate of 1%-5%. Even if you outsource your bounce handling to your ESP, you are still responsible for how they manage the removal of names - so be sure you understand what they are doing on your behalf. Your bounce rate is a good number to have included in your reports. It tells you something about your list hygiene. But it tells you nothing about what happens to your emails. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jun
10
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
Later this month, we will be releasing the results of a survey of European email marketers. However, one finding was so worrisome (and astonishing) that I wanted to gauge your reaction now. It seems that there is a woeful lack of knowledge and understanding among email marketers for how to get past the spam filters, reach the inbox and earn a response - what is known as "inbox deliverability."
According to our survey of several hundred European email marketers (which will be released in full later this year), too few marketers have deep enough knowledge about the causes of delivery failure and the rewards of success to manage and optimize their inbox delivery. ...
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By Dennis Malaspina
Regional Director
Here at Return Path we talk a lot about how good deliverability yields great response. The concept is so simple to us that we find it a little hard to believe that some marketers still don't monitor deliverability. Unfortunately, some marketers think they have all the information they need to accurately measure the success of their program, but the problem lies with the data they are receiving. It's just not complete. Most marketers are looking at simple bounce reports and making assumptions that their email reached the inbox. Unfortunately, the email that didn't bounce may be delivered to the junk folder or be blocked completely - a purgatory state that we call "missing."
To understand this problem, you need a comprehensive email delivery report to truly gauge the impact of your email marketing program. If your reports don't tell you what percentage of your email was placed in the inbox or junk folder and what percentage went missing in cyberspace, your analysis is flawed.
Wouldn't you like to know the truth about your email program? Consider this. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Jun
03
By Tom Bartel
Chief Privacy Officer
In our recent webinar with the FTC we confirmed that the agency is open to continued industry self-regulation - as long as they see some action. I suspect that like me, most of us in the email industry prefer the self regulation ideal. We took the opportunity with our conversation with the FTC to point out many examples of how our industry works together to build and maintain trust in email with consumers.
We continue to have an opportunity as service providers and industry associations, to lead our industry by setting and adopting realistic best practices guidelines that businesses can implement. The email and advertising industries are graced with numerous agencies and associations doing just that, including the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), the Direct Marketing Association, the Email Experience Council, the Email Sender and Provider Coalition, Network Advertising Initiative and the Internet Advertising Bureau, to name a few. Each of these existing industry associations have produced best practice guidance that has resonated with us and helped us manage our businesses properly. The latest effort comes from the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) who has just released a timely draft of Online Trust Principles for public comment.
The thing about any set of principles, and these from the OTA are no exception ...
Categories: Email Deliverability
May
20
By Larry Ellis
Manager of Business Development
I recently ran across an article in the New York Times titled Spam and Global Warming?. Trust me, I was skeptical about this, how could email really be impacting our environment? The article was extracted from The Carbon Footprint of E-mail Spam Report published by McAfee which had some interesting information about the environmental impact of unwanted email.
I have always believed that email is generally free for the sender, but expensive for the recipient. But thinking about it as an irresponsible use of global resources was something that I just hadn't done before. Unfortunately, McAfee's research methodology has been called into question - seriously by spamnation and hysterically in a column by Ken Magill.
But even if spam does not contribute to global warming - at least not in a way that can be quantified ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
May
18
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
A digital marketer in France said to me the other day, "I don't need to worry about inbox deliverability, I have permission." I was shocked that this myth could be so firmly held by an otherwise smart and savvy email marketer. "Do you stop trying to earn a second sale just because you made the first?" I said. "Doesn't what you send and how you treat subscribers after they give you permission have anything to do with subscriber satisfaction?" He paused, and then agreed.
After all, it's subscriber satisfaction, not permission, that earns our place in the inbox and gives us a chance for a response and revenue. And subscriber satisfaction is all about the experience we create with every message, over time.
Consider that ...
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