Improve deliverability or waste your marketing budget

Over 34 billion emails are produced daily, of which 58.5% are spam (Messagelabs April 06). Microsoft alone is reported to block 2.4 billion junk messages to its MSN and Hotmail subscribers every day (Source: BBC). With the tide of spam continually increasing, 20–30% legitimate marketing emails are accidentally trapped by filters (I.e. ‘false-positives’).

This poses a new challenge to UK email marketers of ensuring their emails continue to be delivered and not caught in spam filters- in short to keep deliverability rates as high as possible. So, while good design, segmentation and compelling content are important, failure to actually reach recipients means you are throwing away a proportion of your marketing budget and risking significant brand damage- who wants to be categorised with other junk items offering improved sex lives?

Think about it- if you can improve your deliverability rate from 95% to 98% then these extra people who receive the email in their inbox can open, click through and convert.

Investing in your deliverability generates extra revenue. On the flip side, not investing means you run the risk of losing revenue is deliverability rates fall.

How?

Deliverability rates are influenced by a number of factors:

Firstly, who’s sending?

Your emails are analysed by recipient email systems that evaluate their past dealings with you. Therefore to improve things: suppress hard bounces from your email lists; include clear unsubscribe messages and respect unsubscribe requests; have a back-up relationship with an ESP will help if you experience problems with blacklisting; repeatedly encourage contacts to add you to their safe sender list.

Secondly, what are you sending?

The copy and code of each email is analysed, including what links are used: if using a bulk sender ESP, use a dedicated sub-domain and check that activity by other clients will not affect your reputation; implement domain keys, sender ID and SPF records on your bulk mailing email server; always check your emails using a spam checking tool pre-send.

Lastly, can anyone vouch for you?

Being an accredited sender means you’re certified as reputable: invest time to build relationships with ISPs and anti virus corporate firewall companies to prove your reputation. Although time consuming, it is worthwhile. Alternatively work with an ESP to ensure your emails are whitelisted; Consider schemes such as Goodmail or Sender Score Certified.

Deliverability is a complicated business, but one that is the main challenge for UK email marketers.

For more information about deliverability, please read our Deliverability whitepaper:

Free whitepapers

All Adestra clients enjoy unlimited support. Let us support you with one of our free whitepapers on email marketing:

• Challenges facing UK Email Marketers: survey of email marketers and advice on how to overcome them
• The future for email marketing: steps to take today to prepare for the future of email marketing
• Deliverability defined: business case and steps to take
• SPAM Filters demystified white paper: a marketers briefing
• How to pick the right email partner handbook
• Best practice email design: A guide for designers and marketers to creating HTML for modern email clients

For your free email marketing whitepapers, please contact us