Reputation Scoring Key to E-mail Deliverability

Deliverability is the first step to e-mail marketing success. If your e-mail never hits the inbox, all those subject line and content tactics are useless. So why do the top e-mail marketers get a 90% inbox placement rate, while others languish below 50%? A deciding factor is reputation, as measured by a "sender score," according to Return Path's annual "Sender Score Benchmark Report." A sender’s reputation score is a number, calculated from 0–100, that mailbox providers use to evaluate whether or not e-mail sent by a particular IP address is likely to be legitimate and wanted or should be filtered out of inboxes. Return Path's analysis finds that e-mail senders with a reputation score above 90 saw an average of 92% of their e-mails reach the intended recipient, but e-mail deliverability drops to 72% for senders scoring between 81-90 and just 45% for senders with a score between 71 and 80. So how do you get and keep a strong reputation score? A recent post by Krista Barrack, for the sendinblue blog, cites six ways you could be damaging your sender score, starting with e-mail list issues. One common error is collecting invalid e-mail addresses in your house list (often caused by typos, especially from mobile users). These create hard bounces to erode your sender score. A second mistake is using purchased e-mail data where people have no opt-in relationship with your brand and so don't engage or mark your message as spam, hurting your score. That's why, as responsible data brokers, we don't sell e-mail data and instead broker list rentals so messages are sent by the list owner with valid recipient opt-ins. A third house list problem is allowing outdated, unmailed addresses to accumulate and become invalid. To deal with the problem, set up a program of regular communication and hygiene to prune your list frequently. Poor content quality affects sender scores, too. If your e-mail message is not mobile-optimized, is loaded with spam words, is plagued by faulty links, and/or is not relevant or honest, recipients are either not going to open it, will label it as spam or will opt-out. Timing matters, too, and the most common sin is embrace of a spammer's excess frequency. Note that studies show read rates drop with increased weekly frequency--and opt-outs and complaints rise. Finally, watch for spam traps hiding in your e-mail list. These can get you blacklisted! For more detail, go to http://www.acculistusa.com/whats-the-secret-to-better-e-mail-deliverability-your-reputation/

E-mail Sender Reputation Key to Reaching Inboxes

Reputation matters in marketing, and e-mail marketers especially need a sterling sender reputation to ensure messages reach target inboxes. Mailbox providers use algorithms to filter and remove "spam," and marketing e-mails can be swept out of inboxes based on their sender reputation metrics, explained a recent Inc. magazine article by Peter Roesler, president of Web Marketing Pros. To show how important sender reputation is to inbox placement, Roesler cited recent Return Path research. The Return Path study measured e-mail marketer reputation with a Sender Score--a number between 0 and 100 (best)--to show how mailbox providers view a marketer's IP address. Return Path found one quarter of e-mail marketers with Sender Scores between 71 and 80 had their messages land in junk/spam folders, for example. Even marketers with scores between 81 and 90 had 10% of their messages diverted to junk/spam folders. Marketers want to be in the 99-100 score range, where only 2% of messages went into junk folders. Unfortunately, most e-mail marketers fall far short in terms of sender reputation; Return Path found 52% of e-mails were sent by marketers with scores below 71. One way to end up with a poor score, Roesler warns, is trying to jump-start e-mail marketing by purchase of an e-mail list with addresses that have not been properly obtained. Many of these e-mail recipients will mark unsolicited content as spam, spoiling reputation so legitimate e-mails get dumped in spam limbo. E-mail marketers need to know how they are viewed by mailbox providers if they want to improve reputation and keep it polished. Since scoring criteria vary by provider--based on combinations of open rates, bounce rates, spam complaints, etc.--it's best to go to an outside source to check reputation metrics, advises Roesler. He suggests resources such as SenderBase.org, ReputationAuthority and TrustedSource. See http://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/why-reputation-matters-for-email-marketing.html

Use These E-Mail Tactics to Breach Inbox Barriers

E-mail deliverability will remain a key marketing hurdle in 2016. So here are three basic tactics to drive up open and click rates and help overcome inbox filtering, courtesy of a BrandViews blog post by CRM software firm Marketo. First, use html buttons instead of image buttons for your e-mail call-to-action (CTA), advises the article. That way, when the e-mail is opened, the recipient won't have to wait for images to download; the html-coded button appears upon open and looks the same as an image-based button. Marketo reports that switching from image to html buttons delivered a 5% lift in open rate, a 15% lift in click-to-open rate and a 20% lift in click-through rate in its tests. Next, with 50% of e-mails opened on mobile phones and 65% of consumers starting the purchasing cycle on a mobile device, mobile-responsive e-mail design is clearly a must. A successful mobile e-mail version needs to include these components, per the post: the right breakpoints via media queries in the tag; larger text for readability on a small screen; and a CTA "above the fold" of the mobile screen. Marketo reports a 28% increase in click-through and a 31% boost in click-to-open rates thanks to improved mobile templates. Finally, with over 20% of e-mails landing in junk/spam folders, bouncing or blocked per Return Path, deliverability measures are clearly required. Marketo highlights these deliverability tips: retiring e-mail addresses after one hard bounce; lowering the soft-bounce threshold for retiring e-mail; and list hygiene to cull inactive and bad e-mail addresses. The goal is to only send e-mails to subscribers who want them. For design examples and resource links, read the full article at http://www.business2community.com/brandviews/marketo/3-email-marketing-must-haves-tackle-evolving-inbox-01409706#vt1T9WKppDor0isK.97

U.S. E-mail Deliverablity Rates Drop in 2015

About one in four e-mails sent in the U.S. do not reach intended recipients, reflecting a sharp decline in U.S. e-mail deliverability rates for 2015. The overall U.S. e-mail deliverability rate is just 76% for 2015, down from 87% in 2014, according to the latest global research by Return Path. Return Path's "2015 Deliverability Benchmark Report," which analyzed inbox placement statistics by country, industry and e-mail provider, did have some good news for consumer-facing industries; retail, health and beauty, food and beverage, automotive and apparel industries all showed e-mail deliverability rates of 90% or above globally. In reporting the study, MediaPosts's Email Marketing Daily noted that e-mail provider policies and new spam filtering systems could be one factor impeding e-mail marketers' deliverability ratings. For example, Yahoo! Mail inbox placement rates dropped 13%, although Outlook improved by 3% and Gmail stayed consistent (Gmail's new block button has sparked concerns for 2016 deliverability, however). Another factor could be the overwhelming volume of e-mails, according to the Return Path report, noting that e-mail traffic has grown by 16% since 2013. For more on deliverability by country and industry, read http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/260317/email-deliverability-rates-drop-in-2015.html

Caution: These Words Can Turn E-mail Into Spam

E-mail messaging is a tough balancing act, creating interest and urgency on a tightrope over the spam abyss--especially when writing the subject lines so critical to recipient opens. Our thanks to Geoffrey James, Inc. magazine contributing editor, for his recent article providing a whopping 401 words and phrases likely to raise spam flags and tip e-mail straight into spam folders instead of inboxes. His list starts with "$$$" and ends with "You've been selected." Along the way are many tempting and seemingly innocuous marketing words and phrases: 50% off, affordable, all new, bargain, bonus, call, compare, deal, discount, for you, hello, instant, member, no cost, no obligation, now, one time, only, opportunity, sale, save up to, subscribe, urgent. And, of course, beware almost any phrase beginning with the word "free." Other no-no words reflect the e-mail abuses found in certain industries: insurance, investment, mortgage, quote, prize, refinance, lose weight, search engines, vacation, Viagra. For his complete list of words to avoid, read http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/401-reasons-your-email-is-spam.html

Are Inbox Placement Fails Sapping Your E-mail?

It's an old saying in business that you can only manage what you measure. A recent Target Marketing magazine article by Tom Sather, Return Path's senior director of e-mail research, makes the important point that many marketers are not measuring, and thus not managing, e-mail inbox placement rates. In evaluating e-mail campaign performance, they may focus on improving subject lines, list targeting or brand engagement without realizing that a key part of the target audience never saw the message. They may be comforted by a good deliverability rate, but that rate only measures the percent of e-mail that did not bounce. Inbox placement rates, on the other hand, measure the number of messages actually arriving in subscribers' inboxes, taking into account those undelivered plus those shunted into spam folders. E-mail inbox placement will be affected by bad addresses and ISP filtering for poor reputation, content and engagement. Inbox placement will in turn fundamentally affect the validity of benchmarks and testing results as well as e-mail ROI, Sather points out. To put his remarks in perspective, note 17% of permission-based e-mails fail to reach inboxes globally--6% going to spam folders and 11% blocked--according to Return Path's most recent "Inbox Placement 2014" benchmark report. U.S. marketers did only a little better, with 13% of e-mails failing to reach inboxes on average. But on an industry basis, inbox placement rates have a wide range, with the best inbox placement rate attributed to health and beauty pitches (96%) and software and Internet e-mails at the bottom (43%). For Sather's comments on why inbox placement matters, read http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/inbox-placement-rates-cant-measure-cant-see/