Back to Basics: What is the connection between reputation and deliverability?

As we discussed in part 1 and 2 of this series, nothing in email is easy. While many factors contribute to a challenging environment, I think we can all agree that spam is at the center of everything that makes email difficult. If it wasn’t for spammers and their irresponsible practices, email would work better for everyone. Unfortunately there is no “silver bullet” solution to keep spam out and wanted email in. Over time, through a lot of hard work and collaboration, sender reputation has emerged as way to distinguish legitimate businesses from spammers. Today, there are clear metrics that contribute to a good reputation and specific practices that result in a bad reputation. Return Path has even developed a simple way to measure reputation in the form of our Sender Score. Still there is a lot of confusion about reputation and what role it plays in ensuring email deliverability. Muddling the issue even more are the many vendors who oversimplify the issues and challenges – and fail to emphasize the essential relationship between a good reputation and strong inbox delivery rates.

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Back to Basics: What’s the deal with the “delivered rate”?

So you would think measuring how much email makes it to the inbox and how much doesn’t would be straightforward. Unfortunately, like most things in email, it’s complicated. As usual the complexity is largely a function of misleading terminology and the lack of transparency in the email eco-system. In an ideal world the “delivered rate” metric would mean exactly what it seems to say: the percentage of email that arrived in the inbox. In fact, most of the time “delivered rate” is the percentage of email that was sent but didn’t bounce. If the email didn’t bounce, it should have been delivered, right? Wrong.

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Back to Basics: Why Everybody’s NOT An Expert

There is no doubt about it email is a complex channel. Consumers love it but they hate it. Spammers abuse it. ISPs struggle to tame it. Most confusing of all, everybody is an expert and everybody has an opinion. This is especially true in the area of deliverability where every vendor in the industry claims to know how to get your email delivered. This claim usually has little to do with the vendor’s core business. So what does it take to be a deliverability expert? How do you know if you have a deliverability problem? Where do you go to find out what percentage of your email actually gets delivered to the inbox? Not the junk or bulk folder but the inbox, where a relevant and expected message can earn an open, click or conversion.

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Fight or Flight? Dealing With Marketing Stress

Whether or not you believe we are in or heading to a recession, you most likely believe we are in times of uncertainty. If you are like the many clients I have talked to over the past few months, your budget has been frozen or cut. You still have goals to meet and now you need to meet them with fewer funds. This is not a fun or easy place for you to be in. The question is how will you react to this marketing stress. Will you fight or flee?

I hope everyone reading this chooses to fight. I hope you choose to make your own luck rather than waiting for luck to find you. I hope you choose to find a way to make more with less. These times of uncertainty are times of opportunity. An opportunity for you to shine. An opportunity for your business to not only exist, but grow.

If you are still reading, you chose to fight. Good for you! In order to fight and move forward …

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What Do You Really Know About Your Inbox Deliverability?

I had the pleasure of attending Marketing Sherpa’s Email Summit this week where I had the unique opportunity to network and gain valuable insight from savvy email marketers who openly shared their experiences, talked about their obstacles and raved about their successes. I am sure most of you read Marketing’ Sherpa’s summary report of their recent email summit. While I agree with most of the commentary, I was a little taken aback by the notion that deliverability is no longer a big topic and subsequently, not a big issue.

I am certainly not saying that relevancy is not important, or is search, or segmentation, social media, etc. I guess the word I would use is “relative,” not “relevance.” My point is, when you send an email message, your expectation is that it will be delivered to the intended recipient with the messaging you created. Much like print, television, word of mouth and radio, email is a prime communication channel that, for direct marketers, is intended to drive a response. If the message is not delivered, then the effort is futile.

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Three Great Questions (and Answers) From Our Chicago Client Leadership Seminar

Last week the Return Path crew traveled to Chicago for our second in a series of Email Marketing Leadership Forums. These are half-day workshops that include up-to-the-minute industry news on email deliverability and response.

The session was lively with lots of great questions from some of Chicago’s top email marketers. Here are just three interesting questions, with answers from the Return Path expert panel.

1. Are my “best buyers” my best audience for effective segmentation?

Not necessarily. …

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Take the Credit You Deserve

When running reports on email metrics, marketers know to remove the bounces so that they are reporting only the response rates of the emails that were delivered. This method makes sense – an email that bounces can’t possibly generate a response. Including the bounces would make your metrics look much worse than they really are.

So it’s surprising to me that email marketers don’t also remove the messages that don’t make it to the inbox because of deliverability failures. These messages are no more capable of generating a response than your hard bounces, but get included in – and therefore depress – your metrics reports. This means that you are not taking the credit you deserve for the revenue your email is generating.

Let’s look at an example to illustrate this point …

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Build your house file efficiently

Every marketer wants a large, robust email house file — and despite all the hype and myth in the marketplace, there are basically four ways to get there: reactivation (ECOA and list hygiene), append, paid acquisition and organic growth. Take a holistic view of your email program by considering all of these — and aim not just for high counts, but high quality.

For example, reconnecting with lost customers on your file through ECOA and list hygiene will reactivate subscribers you’ve already paid to acquire through other means. These subscribers may ….

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