I guess I don’t have to point out that deliverability is a hot topic in email marketing.
For one thing, the number of emails increases. If I remember well, it’s Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst David Daniels, who said that "By 2014 (direct) marketers will waste $144 million on emails that never reach their primary target. Successful Direct Marketing pros will alter their tactics to overcome inbox clutter and increase relevancy."
However, it’s not the only challenge of course. Time to involve an expert, so I asked Casper Schoute, who runs Reputy and is also co-chair of the international committee of the Online Trust Alliance.
Before giving Casper’s views on email deliverability, a word on his company. Reputy optimizes transactional and commercial email deliverability.
Through Reputy’s Managed Deliverability Service, businesses realize enhanced trust, click-through and turnover. The specialties of Reputy are email deliverability and online trust. The company is first authorized referral partner for Return Path Certified in The Netherlands and, as I just mentioned, an active member of the Online Trust Alliance (OTA).
The first question I obviously asked Casper is what defines whether an email gets delivered or not and if the ways ISPs and spam filters operate have changed.
This is what he answered: “The days that emails were filtered based on content only are long gone. In the war against growing volumes of spam and fraudulent email such as phishing, ISPs and incoming spam filters are continuously using more and more techniques to filter the bad guys from the good guys. Since email is critical for most businesses, getting email into the inbox is valuable. Deliverability is not only an issue for bulk email, such as newsletters and smart campaigns, but also (and maybe even more important) for transactional email like order confirmations. In fact, it is an issue for all outbound emails".
Sender reputation is key in email deliverability
If the days that emails were filtered based on content only are long gone, then what is determining deliverability in this day and age?
Casper: “Nowadays, reputation is key. Various metrics are taken into account to determine the reputation of a sender. For instance, when somebody hits the “this-is-spam” button, ISPs will treat this as a complaint by one of their customers, and they are very serious about that. If there are too many complaints the whole outbound email program is at risk of getting send straight into the junk folder or not accepted at all. Another aspect is the way that organizations perform bounce management. Sending email to a lot of addresses that no longer exist (hard bounces) is a red flag for ISPs. They see this as spam-like behavior, because spammers don’t bother to process hard bounces either. So, a company should make sure that their user base is ‘clean’ and hard bounces are deactivated. The same goes for complaints; these should be processed. After all why would you send email to people that obviously don’t want it?”
Sender reputation and bounces are crucial. Recently, I posted about the fact that ISPs are starting to look more at elements such as interaction (number of mails opened, clicks, etc.) and in these social media and engagement marketing times it seems obvious that those elements are taken into account also.
Engagement and brand protection
Casper confirms the importance of engagement in email marketing deliverability: “Sending email to people that really want to receive it and having low complaint rates, has been and will stay very important for inbox placement. Respecting receiver’s wishes is getting even more important as various ISPs have implemented, or are implementing several engagement metrics into their reputation systems. Are emails opened and do people click in them? Also, marking an email as “This-is-not-spam” has a positive effect on sender reputation. Having an opt-in and inbox placement does not automatically go hand in hand. At one hand, you have the legal definition of spam and at the other hand, there are the ISPs and receivers that determine the legitimacy of email, and whether it is placed in the inbox. To get an engaged user base, companies should be transparent at the opt-in process, manage user expectations and deliver relevant content, giving customers control over their data and preferences”.
Engagement, again that magical word that comes back so often in this blog. However, if you think you now know all you need to know about email deliverability, think again. I also asked Casper to tackle issues regarding authentication. Casper, who groups them under the title “Identity and brand protection” has a message for email marketers, regarding the authentication of domains.
Here is what he says: “Implementing authentication methods like SenderID and DKIM is a must for email deliverability. These techniques are used at the receiving end to check if a sender really is who they say they are. Authenticating has an additional benefit, by using these techniques companies battle phishing and protect consumers. I strongly recommend all businesses to authenticate all domains, including domains not used for email, to protect their brands from abuse like spoofing and phishing”.
Conclusion: there are many changes in the email deliverability area. Reputation, interaction, engagement and sender reputations are just some of the elements and of course good old content-based filtering still exists too.
And remember that email deliverability is not only about achieving the best results possible from your email marketing efforts: it’s about brand protection too!
Some related posts:
- 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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