Feb
25
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
Gene Raitt, Chairman of the DMA, has launched a new blog today called DM Unplugged. It's not an official DMA property. Gene won't be the only contributor -- over time, other DMA board members (including me) and thought leaders in the direct and interactive marketing communities at large -- will contribute as well.
This is one small, though notable, development in a series of things the DMA is working on as it transforms itself. Look for some truly "unplugged" commentary on this blog about both things happening in the industry and transparent views into things happening at the DMA as well as invitations to contribute to the discussion on both.
Tell me moreCategories: News
Feb
03
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
The recently released Return Path Deliverability Benchmark report revealed that email deliverability problems plague marketers across the globe. European marketers, with an 85% inbox rate (messages delivered to subscribers' inboxes) are slightly better off than their colleagues in North America who only make it to the inbox 80% of the time. Europeans are a bit worse off than their counter-parts in Asia-Pacific who get delivered 86% of the time.
Here are some key findings from major markets in Europe:
+ In the United Kingdom, 89% of email made to the inbox. France did almost as well with an 88% inbox rate while Germany was in line with the European average at 85%.
+ For email being sent to the "spam" or "bulk" folder, the United Kingdom had the lowest rate at just 3% while Germany had the highest with 11%. France was right in the middle with nearly 5% of email sent to the "junk" or "bulk" folder.
+ A significant percentage of email was categorized as "missing" or not delivered at all. In both the United Kingdom and France 7% of email went missing. Germany did slightly better with just 3% in this category.
The report also looked at non-delivered rates (messages routed to junk/bulk folders or blocked all together) by Internet Service Provider (ISP) in France, Germany and the UK. Inbox placement rates varied significantly from ISP to ISP. In the UK, toughest inboxes to get into were Demon, BT Internet, AOL, Orange, and Yahoo!. In France, it was SFR, AOL, LaPoste, Yahoo!, and Orange and in Germany, it was Web.de, AOL, Yahoo!, Freenet, and GMX.
Categories: Email Deliverability | News | Response
Feb
02
By George Bilbrey
President
Today, Return Path is pleased to present our Global Deliverability Benchmark for the second half of 2009. We conducted this study by monitoring data from our Mailbox Monitor service for email campaigns deployed from July to December 2009. We tracked delivery, blocking and filtering for more than 600,000 campaigns. In addition we reviewed non-delivered data for hundreds of ISPs in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the Asia Pacific territories.
Here are some highlights and key findings:
What does this data tell us about the state of email marketing? The answer is clear: deliverability is still a crisis for commercial email senders.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News
New York, NY - As commercial email senders increasingly turn to email marketing to help drive sales and attract new customers, problems remain in ensuring that requested emails successfully reach consumer inboxes. In the second half of 2009, 19.9% of commercial, permissioned emails never reached consumers inboxes in the United States and Canada, a slight improvement from January - June 2009 when 20.7% of commercial, permmissioned emails failed to reach consumers inboxes, according to the new Return Path Email Deliverability Benchmark Report. European inbox placement rates fared slightly better with 15% of requested, permissioned emails never reaching consumer inboxes.
Permissioned email reached only 80.1% of consumer inboxes in the United States and Canada during the second half of 2009 (July through December), a .8% increase from the 79.3% inbox placement rate recorded in the first half of 2009. In the United States and Canada, 3.5% of those emails were delivered to a "junk" or "bulk" email folder and 16.3% were missing or not delivered at all - with no hard bounce message or other notification of non-delivery. In Europe, 85.5% of emails reached consumers inboxes, 3.6% of emails were delivered to a "junk" or "bulk" folder, and 11% of emails were missing or not delivered at all. In the Asia Pacific region, inbox placement of permissioned emails was higher in the second half of 2009 with 86.9% of emails reaching the inbox. 10.7% of emails were missing or not delivered and 2.5% of emails were delivered to a "junk" or "bulk" folder.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News | Press Releases
Jan
25
Our new episode of Reputation Radio is now available on iTunes.
In this episode, we interview Peter Blair, Security Specialist at Tucows. Blair discusses the biggest misconceptions among marketers about deliverability and how ISPs handle mail. Blair also talks about Tucows' Feedback Loop for email senders, and he discusses the recent debate about ISPs use of engagement metrics as part of email deliverability.
Is there someone in the email universe you think we should interview? Do you have a question about email deliverability or sender reputation>? Call (320) 52EMAIL (523-6245) and leave a message. Or, email us: podcast@returnpath.net. We might use your question in a future episode.
Listen to episode 14 now and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss a minute of Reputation Radio.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News
Jan
21
Neil Schwartzman
Director, Certification Security & Standards
Many of us have seen the heart-wrenching scenes from the world's latest natural disaster, in Haiti, and want to help.
Unfortunately, there are some who would take advantage of the situation, and people's charitable nature, and put fraudulent requests for money online. As Linda McGlasson over at the Bank Info Security blog said 'there Is a special place in hell' for people like this.
Let's hope so, because the sad, awful truth of it is that Symantec is reporting that they have already seen spam fraudulently claiming to be from the Red Cross, soliciting donations for Haitian Earthquake relief funds. There have been sporadic reports of fraudulent tweets on Twitter, and some Google search results have been skewed in an attempt to divert people to malware and phishing sites.
Tell me moreCategories: News
Jan
20
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
As I wrote a few months back, I recently joined the DMA's Board of Directors and its Executive Committee to try to help the association - one of the largest and highest profile groups representing marketers - advance its agenda in a few specific ways. At the time, I noted that my interests would be on consumer advocacy and engagement, execution around interactive marketing issues and the internet community, and transparency around the organization itself.
Yesterday, John Greco, the association's CEO, announced he is stepping down to make way for the next generation of leadership. John has done some great work the past five years running the DMA and has advanced it materially from where the association was when he took over in terms of interactive marketing, but he recognized (the hallmark of a good leader) that it was time for a change.
There are all sorts of questions people have about this announcement, and I've already gotten a number of calls and emails from people trying to read between the lines and get some inside scoop. Some of the questions have answers - others don't at this stage or can't given confidentiality agreements.
Tell me moreCategories: News
Jan
15
By George Bilbrey
President
As we told you just before the new year, the Return Path team has been hard at work integrating new data sources into the scoring models that power our Sender Score. The updates are live and in all, we've increased the size of the Sender Score footprint by 25%!
More access to unique IP data means Return Path will be able to calculate Sender Scores for even more IPs. I'm proud to report that there will be very few scenarios where we won't be able to generate a score for an IP.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News
Jan
13
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
As I mentioned in some recent posts on OnlyOnce, I've really enjoyed sharing the Return Path story with the tech start-up community in New York through groups like the NYC Lean Startup Meetup.
Next week I'm taking the Return Path story on the road to Silicon Valley where I'll be presenting to Startup2Startup. Startup2Startup is a group of Silicon Valley geeks, entrepreneurs, and investors dedicated to educating and helping the next generation of Internet startups. They meet monthly over dinner to discuss relevant topics in technology and entrepreneurship, connect with new people and companies, and share our knowledge and experience.
You'll not only get hear about Return Path's 10 years in business but I'll also be sharing some best practices to diagnose and resolve email deliverability problems.
Interested? Request an invitation here.
Stay tuned for more on this post-event.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News
Jan
07
For immediate release - Return Path, the leading email deliverability and reputation management company, today released its Top Email Trends in 2009 report. While 2010 promises even more changes in the email industry, Return Path has identified the top trends in email in the past year.
"Return Path is dedicated to ensuring that consumers receive the emails they want to receive and offering ISPs the tools and knowledge to identify legitimate, permissioned email," said George Bilbrey, President, Return Path. "With our extensive knowledge of the email industry, we feel it's important and valuable to learn from the past to foresee where the industry is headed in 2010. By understanding the industry trends in 2009, marketers can work to improve their email programs in 2010."
The Top 10 Emails Trends in 2009, include:
Categories: News | Press Releases
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