Editorial Articles

UK marketers’ inbox placement rates fell 3.5 per cent over 18 months, despite greater awareness of simple best practice methods and new technologies. Marketers are failing to reach the inboxes of millions of consumers who have requested their emails and are seeing their emails going missing completely far more often than French and German marketers. Richard Gibson of Return Path looks at some of the factors driving deliverability

Part of the problem is that many marketers are still relying on the inaccurate ‘bounce rate metric’ to measure how many of their emails are being ‘sent’. This method of monitoring email deliverability simply subtracts the hard bounces returned to marketers from the number of emails they sent out, providing a false sense of success of their email marketing campaigns. This fails to take into account emails that go straight into consumers’ spam folders or go missing completely – not reaching consumers’ inboxes or even their spam folders. It is therefore vital that marketers take responsibility for knowing exactly where every single one of their sent emails goes. They must continuously monitor their IPR to get an accurate assessment of the success of their email marketing performance.

The key objective of any email marketing campaign is reaching the inbox, yet UK marketers’ inbox placement rates (IPR) – the percentage of emails that reach consumers’ inboxes – have declined 3.5 per cent over 18 months. This means millions of consumers are not receiving the emails they request from email marketers despite greater awareness of simple best practice methods that tackle the problems of deliverability.

Every six months Return Path measures how many emails make it into the inboxes of consumers subscribed to the largest ISPs worldwide in its Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report. The first benchmark report for the UK, released in December 2009, found that nine in every ten emails requested by consumers from UK brands (89.9 per cent) successfully reached their inboxes. The latest data, monitoring the delivery of 600,000 email marketing campaigns between January and July 2011, found UK marketers’ IPR have fallen to 86.4 per cent – meaning that now as many as one in seven marketing emails fails to reach consumers’ inboxes.

The root of poor IPR is most often poor marketing practice rather than technical issues. Many marketers neglect to act upon even basic best practice methods, such as sending new customers a welcome message, enabling a simple email subscription opt-out process and offering consumers choice about whether and how much email they will receive. Utilising best practice tactics – which also include tidying up email address lists, implementing win-back campaigns and acting upon consumers’ unsubscribe requests – ensures that marketers’ emails reach consumers who have requested to receive them. Marketers not adopting these simple and efficient best practice methods will see their email marketing campaigns continue to fail to reach their potential.

Early adopter email marketing managers have already proved that it is possible to dramatically improve IPR, and even achieve 100 per cent of emails reaching consumers’ inboxes, by acting on best practice and new technology improvements. Here are a few examples of companies who have got email deliverability right:

• Groupon’s email delivery speeds increased by 40 per cent after integrating best practices and using Return Path certification for a month. This enabled 98 per cent of Groupon’s sent emails to reach its subscribers on time, which is vital due to the nature of the website’s daily deals emails, often only valid for 24 hours. Groupon generated a 180:1 return on its investment in Return Path’s Certification Program.

• Dealchecker, one of the top five travel websites in the UK, enhanced its IPR by 21.9 per cent and saw 24 per cent more opens and 25 per cent more clicks. The site had previously seen more than one in seven emails requested by customers (14 per cent) going missing completely and more than one in eight sent emails (12 per cent) going straight to consumers’ spam folders. The travel site boosted its delivery rates to 96 per cent, well above the UK average of just 86.4 per cent.

• Friends Reunited enhanced its email deliverability by nearly 40 per cent within one month of working on utilising best practices and being certified with Return Path. Previously, more than a quarter (27 per cent) of around 30 million emails the social network sent every month were going missing completely and one in twenty (5.7 per cent) were ending up in subscribers’ spam folders. The social network saw its missing rate fall dramatically to just one in 25 emails (4.1 per cent) as it achieved 92.5 per cent of sent emails reaching consumers’ inboxes.

Despite greater awareness of best practices and these examples of companies achieving massive improvement in their IPR, many leading UK brands are still struggling to reach the inboxes of their consumers. Return Path's data shows that UK marketers’ emails are going missing completely far more often than their counterparts in France and Germany, Europe’s other two key digital marketplaces. One in every 13 legitimate emails sent by UK marketers (7.8 per cent) now goes missing completely – compared to just one in 37 legitimate emails sent by their German industry peers (2.8 per cent) and one in 17 legitimate emails sent by French marketers (5.8 per cent).

There is significant lost revenue through email not reaching consumers’ inboxes, and consumer research consistently shows that people are unlikely to check their spam folders for marketing messages. So assuming that an email has been sent because it hasn’t bounced back to the sender is a self-detrimental approach to email marketing. Marketers must embrace simple best practice methods, take accountability for the final destination of their sent emails and utilise new technologies to ensure their email marketing campaigns are a success.

Richard Gibson, Channel Relationship Manager, Return Path