'Net Features : deliverability

Email to Non-Responsive Recipients Endangers Deliverability

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:00:00 GMT

A new study from Return Path indicates that only 12.5% take steps to re-engage with lapsed subscribers.

A majority of the email marketers studied sent email at a steady, high frequency for a 19-month period, despite a lack of response from the subscriber (no opens, no clicks, no purchases). 11 of 40 online retailers studied (27%) stopped sending email to non-responsive subscribers but 10 of the companies stopped sending email without making any attempt to reengage the customer or specifically asking the customer whether or not they’d like to continue receiving emails.

“We were certainly surprised to see how these e-retailers were sending emails to a customer who was completely non-responsive,” said Stephanie Colleton, Director of Professional Services, Return Path. “We strongly recommend that email marketers, not just e-retailers, monitor their subscriber responses – opens, click-throughs and conversions – and adapt their campaigns to either slow down the emails to once per month or send a re-permission email to determine subscribers’ continued interest in receiving emails.”

The lesson is clear according to Return Path: when high-volume email marketers or publishers continue to send emails to non-responsive subscribers they risk endangering their overall email deliverability. When non-responsive subscribers receive a steady stream of emails, or in some cases an increased frequency of emails, they will often begin reporting those emails as spam driving up the marketer’s complaint rate.

Only five of the companies (12.5%) studied actually sent one or more win-back messages – messages designed to reengage subscribers and ultimately drive additional purchases. Bed, Bath & Beyond had the most complete email win-back strategy of the e-retailers studied. They identified the inactive subscribers in their file, decreased the frequency of emails to those subscribers over time (from seven emails per month down to a few more than five per month, and eventually to less than one). After one year of inactivity, they sent a clear, attractive win-back message with a discount offer for an item of the subscriber’s choosing. A week after that win-back campaign, they sent a re-permission email specifying a date when they would stop sending email unless they received subscriber permission. When they received no response to the re-permission email, they honored their commitment and stopped sending.

Switching Email Service Providers

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:30:00 GMT

Recent survey data from Strongmail reveals the majority of businesses employing an email service provider (ESP) have switched within the last two years and another third plan to do so in the next 12 months. Why?

According to the release, “the data shows that 77 percent of these companies have switched providers in the past two years for three main reasons: lack of product features, limited services and high costs.” With such variance in pricing across the industry, I expect that it has more to do with cost than pricing.

Other reasons for switching email service providers include deliverability challenges, the inability to leverage data in campaigns, general dissatisfaction, poor support, system down time, data security and a desire to bring email on-premise. It is interesting to note that deliverability services are consumed at nearly three times the rate of any other ESP service offering.

On a related note, Website Magazine recent post on email metrics has generated a lot of attention so we encourage you to check that out. Our guidance is to do all that you can to optimize email effectiveness before switching email service providers.

StreamSend "Gets" Deliverability

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:18:00 GMT

How much do you know about analyzing an email for deliverability? If you're a client of email marketing software provider StreamSend and your answer was "not much" you'll certainly know more now.

The company just released Email Analyzer, a tool that helps businesses improve deliverability and email campaign effectiveness. The tool enables email marketers to test for potential spam filter challenges on nine spam filters including SpamAssasin, Postini, Barracuda and others. Marketers can also preview how the email will render in 30 various email clients such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, comcast, AOL and others prior to sending.

“We are very pleased to be able to save our customers time and money with Email Analyzer by helping them improve the effectiveness of their emails before they send them,” said Dan Foorotan, president of StreamSend Email Marketing. “It is a big advantage to be able to spot and address any potential problem areas in advance.”

Deliverability the Focus of Lyris ListManager 10

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:57:00 GMT

Lyris released the latest version of its email marketing solution, Lyris ListManager 10 - Delivery Edition.

The offering harnesses the power of "mailstreams" or the ability to send campaing email in paralell over multiple IP addresses in order to improve deliverability. Lyris is also introducing MailStream optimization, a feature that gives marketesr the ability to offer an "email delivery advantage" to their most important subscribers by grouping them together on one IP address, ensuring they kep their reputation score high.

Terrifying Email Deliverability Study

Administrator — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:42:00 GMT

According to the Lyris ISP Deliverability Report (PDF), nearly one out of every five permission-based email messages sent to U.S.-based ISPs lands in the junk mail folder. That means slightly more than 76 percent of invited email successfully makes it to the inbox. Worried yet? Good....(read more)