Where Did My Email Go? Your Guide to Reaching the Inbox

Please join me on May 24th for the American Marketing Association virtual event “The Evolution of Email: Essentials for Campaign Success.” This free virtual conference runs from 9AM to 4PM CDT and will be covering topics such as deliverability, design, list growth and new technologies.

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Email in Motion: How Mobile is Leading the Email Revolution

I am pleased to announce our latest mobile study “Email in Motion: Mobile is Leading the Email Revolution” We decided to have a little more fun with the data this time and release the findings within an infographic rather than a full research paper. Nothing was too surprising to me, except the fact that so many marketers still aren’t tracking how many emails are read on mobile devices, and having no mobile strategy whatsoever. Below is a breakdown of the major findings.

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Data Insights: Using Sender Reputation Data for Better Inbox Placement

Sender Reputation Data (SRD) is a metric that is used by Microsoft in its proprietary spam filtering software called SmartScreen that determines if a message should be delivered to the inbox, spam folder or blocked. It consists of a panel of hundreds of thousands of users and these panelists are asked to determine if the filtering decision that Microsoft’s spam filter made was correct or not. This provides more accurate feedback since it’s nearly impossible for spammers to game this metric. Additionally, SRD minimizes the effect that subscriber complaints can have on one’s reputation and deliverability if subscribers are erroneously using the junk button, either marking an email as junk on accident or using the junk button to delete or unsubscribe from an email. In that sense, sender reputation data is not a complaint metric, but rather a feedback metric. In fact, at Return Path, we find the metric so useful that we also use it as part of our compliance efforts for Return Path Certification.

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Using Sender Score to Avoid Being a Statistic

If you’ve read the Global Deliverability Benchmark Report, you now know that it’s more difficult than ever to reach the inbox with more commercial email landing in the spam folder than ever before. If you’re not worried about your mails landing in the spam folder, you should be. As DJ Waldow from Waldow Social recently asked, how often do people really check their spam folders for mail they were expecting? In most case, it’s not often at all. If you’re not making it to the inbox, you’re not getting a response, an impression, or even a conversion. Simply put: you’re wasting your time and money. You don’t have to be the 1 in 4 statistic that never reaches the inbox. I’ll explain how you can determine the reasons you’re not reaching the inbox, so you know what to focus your time and efforts on.

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NEW RESEARCH STUDY: Nearly 1 in 4 messages never reach the inbox. How do you compare?

I’m excited to announce the latest release of our Deliverability Benchmark Report for the second half of 2011. We examined the deliverability rates on thousands of commercial email marketers and over 1.1 million messages across 142 internet service providers (ISPs) across the world from July 1 to December 31, 2011 using data from our Mailbox Monitor product that tracks if mail is delivered to the inbox, spam folder, or never delivered at all. To be honest, some of the findings surprised me in this report.

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A Tale of Two Senders: Gmail Inbox Placements Decrease (for some) After Tightening of Spam Filters

On February 10th, it appears that Gmail has tightened its spam filters. We heard numerous reports from marketers and email service providers (ESPs) about seeing increased spam folder delivery at Gmail, and we are still hearing complaints even a month later. I looked into our numbers and verified that something did indeed happen on February 10th, but if you have a high sending reputation and go beyond best practices, your deliverability rates probably didn’t move much.

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Mozart Milk and Jungle Christmas Trees: My favorite ads from this year’s 2012 AME Awards

I was excited and honored to participate in the Advertising and Marketing Excellence Awards (AME) Awards this year as a North American juror. I am also happy that the winners have been announced so I can finally talk about my experience and favorite advertising campaigns.

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Help! My Email is Getting Marked as Junk

Please join me for a free joint AMA / Return Path webcast on March 1st at 1:00 PM EST where I will discuss deliverability basics such as the reasons marketers’ emails land in the spam folder, and highlight some tactics that have worked for other marketers like you. If you are already registered, thank you and I look forward to your participation. If not, then I hope you will join me for:

Help! My Email is Getting Marked as Junk

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NEW RESEARCH STUDY: Email Trends Are Shifting–Are Your Messages Following?

Today we released the second installment of our global report: “Mobile, Webmail, Desktops: Where Are We Viewing Email Now?” The study sheds light on the impact mobile is having on email viewership and unveils some interesting findings.

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Hotmail Launches Another Major Upgrade: What You Need to Know

Hotmail recently pushed another major update to help their users deal with the high amount of email they signed up for, called graymail, that will be slowly rolled out through the end of the year. While these tools will a major time saver for most Hotmail users, it could spell deliverability problems for your own email program. Here is a breakdown of the changes and what you should start thinking about now.

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