Increasing Deliverability Rates for Permission-Based Email Marketing
By Stephanie Jordan
Gaining new customers can be an expensive undertaking. Experts say it is much smarter to focus on the retention of current customers. But even with an opt-in list, ensuring messages reach the inbox is not easy. "Email deliverability is a topfive challenge," says David Daniels, VP and research director at JupiterResearch, a leading authority in the email marketing industry. "However, approximately one-quarter of marketers do not know their email delivery rates." Daniels acknowledges that delivery will continue to represent a struggle for marketers due to persistent address churn and ISP filtering tactics. But he believes that email delivery is a manageable problem on which marketers should focus.
"Deliverability is a sophisticated puzzle that is rapidly changing," states Dave Dabbah, senior director of marketing for Lyris, a subsidiary of the J.L. Halsey Corporation. "Many senders are unaware of the various deliverability information sources available. Often, even when senders are aware of a data source, they don't necessarily understand the metrics it provides."
Tracking data and taking corrective actions during email campaigns is vital to increasing deliverability. Especially in the case of subscriptions and bounce management. "Respecting subscription removals from a particular list is almost more important than any other part of your normal communication," says Barry Abel, VP of field operations for Message Systems. "It is extremely important to have a process for that. Retention in terms of bounce management is also important. If you get an ISP bounce back from a valid recipient based on email address, there has to be an escalation process to pursue that." The importance, especially in the wake of increased spam and malware, is ISPs have heard loud and clear from their customers that action needs to be taken to stem the tide. As a result, an ISP, after one or two accusations from customers declaring unwanted email, might suspend delivery until a more detailed investigation can take place.
ISP Involvement
"Fighting spam and other types of malicious messaging continues to be a major challenge for ISPs, who err on the side of protecting their customers and users," notes Dabbah. The EmailAdvisor Report Card, released earlier this year by Lyris reveals that a majority of the largest US-based ISPs have the lowest rates of delivering email to the inbox. (The quarterly research study that monitors deliverability rates for permission-based email marketing can be downloaded at www.lyris.com/resources/reports/deliverability_report_Q12007.pdf.) With no set mailing criteria agreed upon from one ISP to another, senders need to understand which actions should be taken, for what ISP. One unifying practice might be the adoption of email authentication technology. "Authentication is allowing the ISP to get to the point that if mail is not authenticated, then it will be downgraded or even flat out rejected in the longer term," notes Abel. "It is the marriage of authentication and reputation, which will be the saving grace at the end of the day, allowing to make the consolidated decision to deliver the message."
When asked if authentication and reputation will aid in consensus with deliverability criteria, Dabbah observes, "As authentication protocols gain more traction in the marketplace this enables ISPs to implement all sorts of new reputation-based policies. What we are seeing at Lyris is that the ISPs are all experimenting with different policies. Even similar policies, say unsubscribe monitoring, can be implemented very differently at different ISPs."
Maybe It's Not the Content
Another interesting finding from The EmailAdvisor Report Card, is evidence to dispel the widely-held myth among marketers that message content is the key reason ISPs filter legitimate email marketing messages. "The content scoring function is based on the content scoring rules of the widelyadopted Spam Assassin open source project," explains Dabbah. "The emails tested had an average content point score of 1.04, well below the filter's generally accepted spam identification level of 3.0 or higher." Additionally, the survey found that of emails that did generate content scoring, two Spam Assassin rules were most frequently triggered. "One is the heavy use of images, which can increase spam scores up to a full point, and render poorly in email clients with image blocking enabled," reveals Dabbah. There is no absolute standard for the balance of images to text, since different filtering systems have different criteria they use in delivery decisions. "In general a sender wants to create messages that use well-formed HTML," advises Dabbah. "That means that most content should be HTML text as opposed to images. Images are best used to support copy and don't function well when they are replacing the copy. Dabbah goes on to say that given how many ISPs suppress image display, "a sender's email should be completely functional with images turned off. In this way, when images are turned on, they only enhance the message." The other frequent trigger is sending messages with a From Name composed of numbers or symbols rather than an actual name. "Both are easily fixable," concludes Dabbah. So what is the best way to increase deliverability for permission-based email marketing? "There are so many variables, in both the business and technology side," admits Abel. "It has to be a multiphased approach to do the right things at the right times." SJ/TMP