What’s New in Email Marketing - Part 4 After making the effort and substantial investment to create, build and send your emails to your expectant audience, how deflating is it to find out that what you sent went straight to their junk folder, or worse; never reaches their server or any customers at all....your IP address has been black-listed! Peter Ellis of Being Communications finishes off his series of reports covering what’s ‘new’ in email marketing and why your email ‘reputation’ overrides any marketing effort you’ve applied to your email marketing campaigns. The final hurdle.... Deliverability Across the UK and Europe marketers are working hard to create interesting, compelling email messages that will move customers and prospects to open, read, click and buy. The problem is that by the tens of thousands these messages are failing to reach the inbox. Instead they fall into a black hole – never seen, never acted upon. Return Path data shows that 18% of email sent to addresses in the UK, France and Germany was undelivered. Across Europe only 82% of legitimate marketing emails reached subscribers’ inboxes in 2010, down from 85% reaching the inbox in 2009. More than one in eight commercial emails (13.6 per cent) are going missing completely – not in subscribers’ spam folders or inboxes, blocked by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) before reaching their subscribers. Every message that fails to arrive is a lost opportunity for revenue, response and customer engagement. Central to this crisis is the fact that ISPs do not provide visibility into this missing or “junked” email. So you’ll never know if a significant percentage of your email messages failed to arrive in your subscribers’ inboxes. This lack of visibility means marketers cannot take action to improve their situation and their response metrics. For example, since ISPs do not reliably report when messages are “junked” or blocked from delivery, Email Service Providers (ESPs) offering campaign services do not have access to this data either. Marketing organisations that rely on bounce or delivered reports from an ESP to determine the effectiveness of their email programmes arguably are relying on flawed and inaccurate information. It’s all about your reputation The number one question from email marketers is “how do ISPs determine which emails are delivered and which are blocked or sent to bulk folders?” The answer is simple: sender reputation. Nearly 80% of ISP deliverability decisions are based on reputation. The crude, content-based tools that ISPs once relied on to combat spam are no longer a significant factor in deter¬mining which emails are delivered and which are blocked. Furthermore, claims from ESPs that their “strong ISP relationships” or business connec¬tions with leading ISPs will improve your deliverability are in most cases overstated. Inbox placement decisions are data driven and based on con¬crete reputation metrics rather than the subjective measures of the past. Reputation in the world of email deliverability has a very specific meaning that is unrelated to the excellent brand reputation your business may enjoy in other areas. A company’s sending reputation is based entirely on metrics related to how you send email. In general, maintaining a strong sending reputation correlates to strong inbox placement rates. How does my reputation relate to my Deliverability? Very simply, your deliverability or inbox placement metrics are a reflection of your sending reputation. An email marketer with a strong sending reputation should look something like this: • Consistent Volume. A solid communication strategy means that their email volumes remain fairly consistent and they send email on a regular basis, per their subscribers’ expectations. • Low Complaint Rate. Consistently sent, relevant and wanted emails do not generate complaints so their complaint rate is very, very low. • Low Bounce Rates, No Spam Traps. Good list hygiene practices in combination with high permission standards means they have a low “hard bounce” rate and never hit spam traps. • Properly Configured Infrastructure. Their mail streams are authenticated and other aspects of their infrastructure indicate to ISPs that their business is legitimate. • Relevant Content, Well-Formatted HTML. Their content is targeted and relevant with properly formatted HTML so in combination with their other excellent metrics it is unlikely their emails would be tagged for content issues. • Limited Blacklist Appearances. This strong performance means that their IP addresses rarely, if ever appear on reputable blacklists. So what can you do to maintain a strong Deliverability Rate? This is really a question you should ask your email service provider; the company who manages your email marketing system. The answer we give at Being Communications to clients using our Etelligent Email Marketing System goes something like this... Investing in a seed-based monitoring service and technology is the only way we get a complete and accurate picture of your deliverability. These services offer a range of assurances: Seed-based, deliverability monitoring: The only way to know for sure if your email is reaching the inbox is with seed-based deliverability monitoring. Services like these set up “seed” or test accounts with hundreds of ISPs and you include a seed list with every campaign. If the seeds arrive in the inbox you can be sure the rest of your campaign arrived as well. If the seeds are blocked you can take immediate action. SMTP Log Monitoring: Monitoring your SMTP logs, alongside seed-based monitoring, can provide more insight into why your email was blocked and also steps to resolve. Most major ISPs now include URLs in their block codes that tell you why your messages were blocked and high-level advice on what needs to be done to resolve the block. A skilled deliverability expert can interpret these codes and turn them into actionable plans for your team to improve your inbox placement rates. Rendering and content support: Knowing how your campaigns render (look) in all the various email readers is an ongoing challenge. Many deliverability service providers offer testing technology so you can find out if your images display and if your content or HTML trigger spam filters. Blacklist alerting: There is nothing more detrimental to sending reputation than appearing on a well-respected blacklist. Services that provide automated alerting whenever one of your IPs appears on a blacklist are critical. Reputation monitoring: Constant monitoring of campaigns by ISP so you can see how specific ISPs view your reputation. So with your emails now confidently delivered to the customers’ inboxes or ‘priority’ inboxes, it’s now just down to your compelling proposition to acquire, engage, nurture or convert. Good luck. Being Communications offer services in online branding, web development, e-mail marketing, e-commerce, online advertising, online reporting and learning management systems. For more information contact Being by phone on 028 9073 5980, online at www.beingonline.co.uk or by email.
Why not have a look at some past insights provided by Being... Customer is still king in the digital world B2B online communities really do work What's new in email marketing - Part 1 What's new in email marketing - Part 2 What's new in email marketing - Part 3 Online communities really do work
|
