Email deliverability: an interview with Return Path’s Mario Marlisa (part 1)
Earlier this week, I interviewed Casper Schoute of Reputy, an authorized referral partner for Return Path Certified, about email marketing and deliverability.
I also asked Mario Marlisa, Channel Relations EMEA at Return Path, to share his views on the email deliverability matter. In case you don’t know what the company does: Return Path helps commercial email senders get more email delivered to the inbox.
The company provides email deliverability tools and professional services giving senders the insight and resources to achieve higher inbox placement rates and improve email response and ROI across the customer life cycle.
Return Path also runs the Internet’s most widely used third-party whitelist, the Return Path Certification Program and invented the Sender Score, an email reputation measure based on data contributed by ISPs and receivers of large volume email into the Return Path Reputation Network.
The first simple, but for so many email marketers important, question, I asked Mario is what the main elements of an email are that ensure it will be delivered?
Mario asked if I meant delivered or delivered to the inbox? Because, as he says, there is a huge difference.
Mario: “Many people talk about delivery but only if emails actually reach the inbox can they be responded to by the recipients. I can’t emphasise this enough. There is in my experience a lot of confusion around these two ‘different’ definitions and marketers should be focused on the inbox, because only there a message can be clicked, interacted with and responded to”.
The keys to reach the inbox: permission, engagement, frequency and reputation
Interesting to know. However, what are these main elements to reach the inbox?
Mario sumps up four things: permission, engagement, frequency and reputation. Let’ tackle them one by one.
This is what Mario says about permission: “Know where each email address originated and make sure the subscriber provided clear consent to receive email from you. For instance, if you work with a third party, perform some due diligence beforehand to understand where and how they obtained their email addresses, and if they properly disclosed how those email addresses would be used”.
So, in case you would have any doubts about this: permission still rules in email marketing, regarding deliverability too.
Then comes engagement.
Mario: “Perform regular list hygiene. Your goal is to maintain an active, healthy file so carefully track the activity level of your subscribers. Are your subscribers responding to your offers? If so, how often? The more engaged your subscribers are the more likely you are to drive response. Consequently, inactive subscribers tend to complain more, which can drive down your inbox placement rates. Make sure you track engagement metrics to be sure you only send email subscribers want to read”.
Engagement. It’s a word that comes back in nearly every post, I do regarding email marketing (and social media marketing), and it’s important in email deliverability too, Casper Schoute used it several times in his interview.
Email marketing and deliverability; relevance drives engagement
Next comes frequency. Mario: “Sending less is more. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not about sending more email. In fact, you should send less mail that is more relevant to your subscribers. Relevance drives engagement, which drives response so concentrate on sending only email that matters”.
And, finally a word on (sender) reputation, another email deliverability keyword, Mario: “ISPs determine inbox placement based on the reputation of the sender. Therefore, following best practices that reduce complaint rate, unknown user rates, and spam traps hits is an email marketing imperative”.
So, let me repeat the four main elements: permission, engagement, frequency and reputation. Have you noticed the word ‘relevance’?
Yes, it’s something I talk about often, among others in the context of email content. Notice how Mario answered that “relevance drives engagement”.
Now, let’s take engagement a bit further. I asked Mario what other methods ISPs are using or testing these days besides content filtering. As I wrote before one of these methods seems to be checking the interactions recipients have with the emails, in the US at least.
Mario: “There has been talk about engagement, but currently there are only a few US ISPs that look at some type of engagement. And there are no ‘set’ rules – each receiver currently takes a different view”.
The question that arises immediately is what these different views are. Here are some examples Mario gave:
- Yahoo looks at mailbox actions like click, open and time in the inbox before mail is deleted.
- Microsoft uses their panel data to help determine inbox placement.
- Gmail considers the “This Is Spam” and “This Is Not Spam” the biggest factor in how they view engagement.
However, engagement does not seem to be the main topic at ISPs, certainly in Europe.
The good, the bad and the whitelisted
Mario: “Most ISPs are not in a position to track these types of metrics right now, so I don’t see many European ISPs going this route this year. Most will start looking at authentication and domain reputation tracking, though”.
Has Mario noticed other changes in the way ISPs determine if an email is OK? And what about corporate and individual solutions to keep the inblox ‘clean’?
Mario: “ISPs have to constantly change the way they filter email and gauge if the email is legitimate or not. However, there has been a shift from weeding out the bad to finding the good. As such, email marketers will have to really shift their focus on following best practices, particularly authentication, whitelisting and engagement. With phishing and spoofing becoming more prevalent, all marketers (not just financial institutions and social networks) will have to authenticate their mail. Secondly, more ISPs are using trusted whitelists to identify good mailers. Return Path offers the Return Path Certification program which is used by leading Spam filtering solutions like Cloudmark, Spam Assassin and ISPs including Hotmail, Yahoo!, KPN and some are looking at deeper engagement metrics that go beyond opens, clicks and conversions to determine inbox placement such as the number of emails that are voted “not spam”. So, it’s no longer just one criterion, but many because the majority of emails that ISPs deal with is bad mail. By working with them, we can bring a unique level of transparency to marketers from an area of the industry that is constantly changing to respond to ongoing threats from spammers”.
Finally, I asked Mario what companies with large lists should look at from a deliverability viewpoint.
Mario: “Big companies with large lists should focus on devising strong segmentation strategies.
List hygiene is incredibly important: make sure to not only regularly remove bounced email addresses, but also look at who is engaged. If you have subscribers that never open, click or buy your offerings, it may not be worth keeping them on your list? You want a healthy, active file. Check in with your subscribers. Ask them what they like and don’t like and remember to focus on three key factors – permission, engagement and frequency”.
Remembered the key factors? Great.
So far part 1 of this interview. Part 1 means that there’s at least a part 2 of course. Stay tuned, Monday, we will be looking at more issues including evolutions in email marketing and the impact of these evolutions in deliverability.
Some related posts:
- The interview with Casper Schoute
- Common email delivery myths
- Forrester: relevance is a priority for email marketers
- Email marketing deliverability: tips to circumvent spam filters
- Email marketing tips: 5 ways to get your email delivery rates higher
- 4 more ways to get your email delivery rates higher
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Category: Email deliverability, Interviews
