Archive for Deliverability
I have been hearing about changes in deliverability recently. What are they and how do they affect b2b marketers?
Source: Kara Trivunovic, Senior Director Of Strategic Services, Strongmail Systems
Deliverability has been a consistent conversation for years now, and that isn’t going to change any time soon. The individual inbox providers are consistently adjusting their delivery requirements and inbox placement logic to create the most optimal inbox experience for their customers (or to keep us email marketers on our toes). But as a b2b marketer, should you really care what Yahoo is up to? The short answer is yes.
As a b2b marketer, your deliverability can be even more challenging than the largest b-to-c marketers because your success is tightly tied to individual system administrators at various organizations around the world—all with different infrastructures, approaches and theories. But the one thing they all have in common is that they are watching what is developing at the Yahoos of the world so they can start implementing similar practices on their office servers. With that, there are two major developments happening in the space today:
1) Engagement as an inbox placement metric. Inbox providers are starting to look at engagement with your email as a metric for determining inbox placement vs. bulk-foldering. What they deem engagement may vary slightly from your definition, but it is happening nonetheless. The focus is on whether the recipient is opening the email you send and/or replying to the email as a determination for engagement, then making decisions about placement from there.
2) “From†name reputation. Yahoo specifically has started attributing a sending reputation based on the unique combinations of your IP address, sending domain and now “From†name. So if you send emails from inquiry@company.com and offers@company.com, each “From†name will need to support and build its own sending reputation. This change is extremely recent and may not start to affect b2b marketers for quite some time, but it is something to be aware of and to start planning for.
Bottom line? Keep an eye on the deliverability conversations happening, regardless of what industry they occur in, as it will eventually make it to the ranks of system administrators everywhere.
How Much Mail Doesn’t Make It To The Inbox?
Source: ReturnPath,The Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, 2H 2009
Return Path, the global market leader in email deliverability solutions, reviewed data from 131 ISPs in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Asia Pacific territories from July through December of 2009. What the data shows is that email deliverability still plagues commercial email senders worldwide.
The report shows that North American inbox percentages remain flat with 20% of email bulked or missing. The second half of 2009 showed an inbox placement rate of just 80.1% for permission-based commercial email in the United States and Canada. This represents a slight increase as compared to the first half of 2009. The percentage of mail delivered to the “junk†or “bulk†email folder remained flat at 3% in the July to December time period. 16% was not delivered at all between July and December, a slight decrease from earlier in the year.
Top 10 Deliverability Myths Debunked
Source: Lyris, Email Marketing Gurus Guide, 2011
The subject of deliverability has inspired many myths about what will get your email into the inbox and how to manage your deliverability options. Here are some common myths debunked.
1. ISPs have a “bat phone†email marketers can call to resolve deliverability issues. This has never been true which, unfortunately, means that if your email is not being delivered or you’ve been blacklisted, there isn’t one easy solution. Participating in feedback loops can provide you with useful information to prevent ISP deliverability issues, and having an ESP with strong ISP relationships can make the process run more smoothly.
2. There is a list of magic words that will automatically get your email stuck in spam filters.
Using highly effective direct marketing words like “free†in your subject line or emailcontent will not prevent your email messages from being delivered. The number of spam complaints about your domain, your email and online reputation as well as your company’sadherence to best practices and authentication are much more important.
3. Permission-based marketing messages are always delivered to the inbox.
As much as 20 percent of legitimate email in the United States is never delivered. Having permission on its own is not enough to get your email messages delivered to the inboxes of your intended recipients. You must also pay attention to spam complaints and the responsivenessof your subscribers, and keep your list clean.
4. Confirmed subscribers won’t hit the spam button.
The truth is, everyone hits the spam button at one time or another, and for their own reasons. But those who have confirmed their subscriptions with an opt-in are much less likely to do so. Even if your list is double opt-in, relevant content and appropriate adherence to best practices is much more likely to keep email recipients from marking your messages as spam.
5. If campaigns are making money, your company must not have deliverability issues.
This is probably not true. The reality is that, in most cases, a small percentage of your customersare responsible for the highest percentage of response and revenue generated from your email opt-in list. That means you still need to employ best practices to get the most revenue from your email marketing efforts.
6. Email sent at night will prevent ISPs from monitoring your messages.
ISPs monitor email messages via automated processes, and the decision to deliver is made computationally, not by humans. So the time of day when an email is sent does not impact ISP monitoring.
7. Your email service provider handles all aspects of deliverability for your company.
While using a good ESP can help assure the deliverability of your email messages, you also haveto proactively manage your sender reputation. A good ESP will maintain a solid infrastructure and help you authenticate your email messages, track complaints and manage bounces properly. But only you can control your data sourcing, sending frequency and content strategy – all of which contribute to sender reputation.
8. It’s impossible to get subscribers to add you to their safe sender list.
The benefits of asking subscribers to add you to their safe sender list far outweigh any downside. And most savvy consumers understand the benefits of receiving email messages that they have requested, so they are willing to do so. Be sure to include a request to be added to the safe sender list of your subscribers prominently in your email messages, and consider an incentive like a discount if a customer does so.
9. Sender reputation can be monitored with seeding campaigns.
Using “seed addresses†– addresses that, when an email is sent to them, come back to you – in your email campaigns to watch for abuse is essential. It’s one of the most efficient ways to track inbox deliverability and to see if anyone is abusing your opt-in list. However, this is only a small piece of the puzzle; you still need to make sure all the other elements – authentication, feedback loops, sender reputation, etc. – are in place as well.
10. If I send more email, my results and deliverability will improve.
Engagement and overall sender/brand reputation have much more to do with results and deliverability.
Deliverability Failures Remains a Challenge for Commercial Email Senders
Source: Kathleen Maher, Email Product Manager, V12 Group
ReturnPath, the leader in email delivery, conducted a research report the second half of 2009 that showed an inbox placement rate of just 80.1% for permission-based commercial email in the United States and Canada. The report also showed the percentage of mail delivered to the “junk†or “bulk†email folder remained flat at 3% in the July to December time period. 16% was not delivered at all between July and December, a slight decrease from earlier in the year.
Reaching business addresses is still difficult because these inboxes are protected by systems like Postini, Symantec and MessageLabs. Only 75.2% of email is delivered to the inbox through these enterprise systems.
Three Reasons Why Deliverability Is Still a Crisis for Commercial Email Senders:
The Bounce Rate Myth: Senders are generally given reports month after month that show a “delivered†metric that tends to be about 95% to 98%. But in most cases this metric is actually the bounce rate. The system is reporting the number of messages sent through the pipe and subtracting the number that return a hard bounce. Top-tier marketers keep very clean lists and the system itself is set up to clean out those hard bounces quickly (usually before the next send). What senders really need to understand are their inbox placement rate (IPR)- the number of emails that actually arrive in the inbox.
Revenue Masks a Lot of Sins: Email generates a lot of revenue. So, while deliverability failures cost businesses money, this can be masked by the revenue generated by every campaign that goes out the door.
Change is Hard: Many senders are still resistant to implementing the best practices that make email deliverability more likely and more consistent. We still see programs with high frequency, low value and lack of segmentation. Research done by the Return Path Professional Services team in the last 18 months shows high percentages of top brands missing basic best practices like welcome messages, efficient opt-out procedures and appropriate permission level.
How do you get your email to stand out in the inbox?
Source: Kathleen Maher, Email Product Manager, V12 Group
Marketing messages to the primary inbox will swell to an average of more than 9,000 annually in 2014, according to Forrester’s U.S. Email Marketing Forecast. How do you get your promotional email to stand out and the consumers to take action? Here are some tips that you should always be considering when developing an email campaign:
Be clear and succinct: Consumers should be able to scan your email in a maximum of three seconds and know; 1) Who is the email from? 2) What’s in it for me? And 3) How do I take action?
Know your target audience: What are your target’s weak spots? What are they motivated by? What do they want to hear? What will they respond to? According to Forrester’s ROI of Email Relevance report, “non-relevant mailings continue to be the top reason why consumers opt out of email.” Your consumer is much more likely to act if you hit a passion point, educate or simply entertain them.
Find the right time: According to the most recent eROI benchmark study of email-campaign click-through and open rates, Wednesday and Monday have the highest open and click rates. But experience shows that differs greatly by sector. This is why it is important to be testing to see what day, time of day your offer will be most successful – but wait – what works for you at one point in time, may not work for you the same way in another point in time.
Test, test, and test some more: Email is a highly measurable channel and as marketers you should be taking advantages of the many ways in which you can test your campaigns to gather intelligence about your audience that can assist you with further efforts.
Hygiene and Suppression
Regular list hygiene is essential for healthy results and reputation. Without proper list hygiene, you risk losing contact with your customers, damaging your sender reputation and getting your emails blocked by the ISPs.
The following activities are an essential part of a successful list hygiene program:
Scrub your lists regularly
Scrubbing your list is simply making sure that you are keeping it as clean as possible by running your list against a list of known bad domains and role accounts. While you should remove unsubscribes and relevant bounced email addresses immediately, you should also scrub your lists on a regular basis. The volume and frequency of your mailings will determine how often you want to scrub them. Scrubbing should go beyond removing duplicate addresses. continue reading »
What is Email Authentication?
Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA’s) authentication guideline states that email authentication is one way of making the electronic marketplace more secure and improving consumer confidence in email. It simplifies and automates the process of identifying senders, and improves the likelihood that legitimate email will get through to the intended recipient.
Using a postal analogy, email authentication can assure the recipient that your return address, letterhead and personal signature are “authenticâ€; i.e., not faked. Authentication helps prove that you are who you claim to be and that you have the right to send email from your IP address – the first step in ensuring you and your offers are legitimate – not a spammer in disguise giving our industry a bad name.
There are currently two major types of interoperable email authentication systems:
1.   IP-based Solutions like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Sender ID Framework (SIDF) and
2.   Cryptographic Solutions like Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM)
The goal of each is the same: to create a public record against which to validate email messages so that the legitimacy of senders can be verified. Both technologies work to verify that the sender is authorized to send mail from a particular IP address. Authentication makes it difficult to forge IP addresses or the cryptographic signatures utilized by email authentication systems.
A fundamental difference between IP-based and cryptographic authentication solutions is that cryptographic technology protects the integrity of the email contents, while IP-based technology verifies or proves that the sender is authorized by the domain owner to send the mail.
What types of email should be authenticated?
Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA’s) authentication guideline requires that marketers authenticate ALL outbound email that they send or that their service bureaus send on their behalf.
From a practical business standpoint, even if you are not a DMA member, you should authenticate your email to ensure reliable delivery and uninterrupted workflow.
Following is a list of some of the categories of email that your organization may be sending and that need to be authenticated:
•   List Rental Email
•   Marketing & Promotional Email
•   Customer Service Email
•   Non-Bulk Corporate Communications Email
•   Email From Mobile Devices
•   Sales Email
•   Receipts or Shipping Confirmation Email
•   Monthly Statements Via Email
•   Newsletters Via Email
What are domains?
A domain name identifies one or more IP addresses. A domain name appears as part of a Web site’s URL (Uniform Resource Locator, e.g. www.company.com). Domain names use alphabetical addresses that are easier for humans to remember than numeric IP addresses.
Example
Registered domain name: company.com
Domain name: www.company.com
URL: http://www.company.com/index.html
IP address: 192.168.12.34
The Domain Name System (DNS) is an Internet directory service. DNS is where companies publish which IP addresses are allowed to send email on their behalf. DNS is flexible and allows multiple IP addresses to be assigned to a single domain name, or multiple domain names to be assigned to a single IP address. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is in charge of managing the DNS.
What are IP Addresses?
IP addresses, or Internet Protocol addresses, are unique identifiers that are assigned to every computer, server or other device connected to the Internet. Think of IP addresses as telephone numbers: Computers use them to locate and “talk†to each other on the Internet. A typical IP address is expressed in dot notation, e.g. 192.168.12.34. Each number in the address has a value of 1 to 255.
It is generally easier for humans to remember and use alphabetical URLs like “www.company.comâ€, rather than numeric IP addresses. So when you type a URL into your browser, your computer converts the URL into an IP address, language that computers can understand.
Example
IP address: 216.21.62.134
Domain name: www.company.com
IP addresses are managed and created by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Not every computer that connects to the Internet has its own static IP number (i.e. an IP address that never changes). For example, corporate networks and online services usually share a pool of IP addresses among a large number of users, and temporarily assign an IP address to a requesting computer. A temporary IP address is referred to as a dynamic address. You can check with your internet service provider or network administrator to find out if your computer uses static or dynamic IP addressing. Click here to easily look up an IP address or domain name.
How is authentication different from encryption?
Email authentication is used to verify the identity of an entity sending email. Encryption is the method of securing the contents of an email message while in transit and ensuring that only the intended recipient(s) can open and view the email message.
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