Complaints: A Wake-up Call for Marketers

As a Mom, I’m no stranger to complaints. And while I would love to tune out these complaints, I can’t. From “I don’t like this shirt” to “I don’t want to go to the store or take a bath or (insert almost anything here),” I’ve heard more than my share of complaints. With my children, I have taught them that every complaint is an opportunity to learn how to “use our words” and “find solutions.” Unfortunately, complaints aren’t limited to the life of a Mom (or Dad or grandparent). Complaints can also be a challenge for marketers. While ignoring complaints may be the easy thing to do, marketers can’t afford to do so. Complaints are subscribers’ way of communicating dissatisfaction with your email program; and should be treated as a wake-up call for marketers.

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Groupon Sees 40% Increase in Delivery Speed and Increased Email Response Rates with Return Path Certification for Immediate ROI

Annual Investment Generated a Return of 180:1 as More Than 98% of Groupon Emails Are Delivered to Inboxes During Company’s Target Time

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Categories: Press Releases Return Path View Comments

More Questions Around “Building Reputation and Spurring Engagement in the Age of Social and Mobile”

I recently presented a webinar for the AMA entitled “Building Reputation and Spurring Engagement in the Age of Social and Mobile.” You can listen to the recording. We had a great attendance, and didn’t have the opportunity to answer all of the audience questions. I promised the listeners I would follow-up in a blog post, so as promised; here are the answers to your questions.

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Webinar: Building Reputation and Spurring Email Engagement in the Age of Social and Mobile

Please join me on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 1:00PM EST for a discussion on how to use new inbox technologies, mobile and social to achieve higher engagement and deliverability rates.

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Categories: Best Practices How-To Return Path View Comments

Marketing Sherpa Features an Email Marketing Sweepstakes Winner

We’re happy to see one of our marquee clients, Publishers Clearing House (PCH) featured in Marketing Sherpa. Marketing Sherpa focused on PCH’s 99.2% deliverability rate despite heavy usage of “blacklisted” words.

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How Inactive Addresses Hurt Deliverability plus 3 Tips on What to Do

Inactive subscribers are a liability to anyone who sends email. They hurt deliverability, which in turn reduces your response rates, and before you know it, your email program isn’t making as money as it used to. Marketing managers usually understand that the key is to get rid of the deadweight to solve these problems, but most executives try to solve the revenue problem through a numbers game and sending to even more email addresses, many of which are inactive as well. So why should you care about removing inactive addresses?

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A follow-up on Marketing Sherpa’s webinar “Improve Email Deliverability: Tactics for Handling Complaints and Boosting Reputation”

Return Path and Marketing Sherpa joined forces to present a webinar on how to deal with complains. The turnout and questions were great. So great in fact, that we ran out of time to answer them all. Along with Marketing Sherpa co-presenter Adam Sutton, we decided to answer the questions in a two part blog series. Here’s the first.

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Categories: Explanation How-To Return Path View Comments

Warming Up IP Addresses: 5 Steps for Faster Inbox Placement

If you had talked to any email marketer 10 years ago and asked them how they dealt with blocks on their IP addresses, the answer would probably be the same: “We just switched IPs.” Not only was this an unfortunate, albeit effective, way to deal with blocks, it also became a common method used by spammers. They would simply send from one IP address for a very short time and then move on to another, either with IPs they owned or through hijacked computers controlled by botnets. Because of spammers’ behaviors, ISPs and email providers respond by temporarily blocking and limiting the amount of email a new IP address could send. ISPs now treat any new sending IP address like a dog on a short leash, and only extend the leash when the senders’ reputation is proven. To minimize the impact of having to move to a new IP address, consider the following:

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Want to Get into Gmail? Check Your Sender Score (Plus 4 More Tips)

If I had a nickel for every time that someone asked me for tips to get delivered to the inbox at Gmail, I wouldn’t be writing this right now because I’d be retired and living on my own personal island. Gmail has been notoriously difficult for some senders because of lack of requirements and acceptable reputation metrics for getting inbox placement. I’ve listed five, simple tips to help you improve and maintain your delivery at Gmail.

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Categories: Research Return Path View Comments

2010 Email Predictions: Good News for the Good Guys and More Mischief from the Bad Guys

As we embark on a new year and a new decade (and Return Path’s second decade in business), I’m back with my annual predictions for the email industry. My 2009 good news-bad news predictions were somewhat prescient but certainly not my best effort. So, after considerable thought and a fair amount of internal debate, here’s what I’ve got:

1) ISPs will focus more of their anti-spam efforts around picking out the good guys rather than blocking the bad guys. Why? There are just so many more bad guys – and we’ve reached a tipping point where it is faster and cheaper to cherry pick the good senders. Along with their internal tools, we’ll see more ISPs rely on 3rd party white lists like Return Path Certification for more accurate filtering.

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