On Message with Ben Gross

Founded in 1999, New York-based Return Path offers a range of email marketing services intended to improve deliverability, response and list growth. While it’s not in the business of sending email for customers, it does help make sure email gets delivered. Its analytical tools and services are used by marketers and email service providers to monitor and manage inbox deliverability.

The key to inbox delivery is a sender’s reputation. Return Path’s Sender Score Reputation Monitor helps companies track their own reputations by tracking common causes of deliverabity failure like complaints and unsubscribe functions using data from ISPs and anti-spam companies. That data also fuels Sender Score Certified (formerly Bonded Sender), which Return Path acquired from IronPort in 2005. Sender Score Certified is used by more than 120,000 domains, including MSN and Roadrunner, in their filtering processes.

“We partner with many email broadcast vendors , from Epsilon/ Doubleclick to ASPs such as SubscriberMail, who use our deliverability tools to help their clients maintain and manage good sending reputations,” says Stephanie Miller, VP of strategic services at Return Path. “ In addition, with our accreditation program, Sender Score Certified, customers have seen 20 percent deliverability improvement after using the program.”

In addition to the usual open, bounce, and clickthrough rates, Miller also urges marketers to check their rates of:

First issue unsubscribes, i.e. how many people unsubscribe after just one message.

Email address changes — the average is about 31 percent per year, so making it easy for users to report changes is important.

Complaints — how many recipients clicked a “this is spam” button or otherwise complained to their service provider or back to you?

Forwarding, that is, how often are newsletters forwarded on from the original recipient. Higher forwarding rates indicate greater relevance.

Inbox Delivery — different than a bounce rate, as email that goes to bulk or missing does not generate a bounce notice.

“The good news is that marketers control or manage the key drivers of a good sending reputation. Delivery of email broadcast is a commodity that is very price driven, so don’t expect your ESP to solve your problems if you have bad practices,” Miller says. “For example, if your lists aren’t clean, or you send you more often than you said you would.”

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