A recent JupiterResearch report on ESPs notes that 70% of marketers rank “deliverability” as their number one priority when selecting an Email Service Provider (ESP).

ReturnPath’s Ken Takahashi writes that ESPs cannot solve all deliverability problems for email marketers. Ken’s post makes the very valid point about marketers taking responsibility for their own deliverability rates: “problems begin with poor data collection practices. In fact, I believe that 90% of the fate of your email program has been determined at the point of data collection. Coupled with poor list hygiene and not setting and maintaining customer expectation, marketers do most of the damage themselves and expect ESPs to clean up their mess.”

The four cornerstones of successful email marketing are Reputation, Respect, Recognition and Relevance. Ken’s three pointers to problem areas are a prime example of marketing that doesn’t build on the four cornerstones. Here are a few suggestions to tackle the problem areas:

• Poor data collection practices – Review your companywide marketing methods. Find out where and how addresses are being sourced in every department. Establish a companywide stringent permission policy. Have a co-ordinated mailing schedule for all departments so your company is not over mailing. ‘Too frequently’ is a top reason for complaints and the main reason you lose the attention of your subscriber. Make the unsubscribe supremely easy to use and highly visible.
• Poor list hygiene – Keep your lists very, very clean. Have a process in place for the removal of permanent bounces after every mailing. Have a companywide suppression system in place for unsubscribes. Strive to have only active, real users on your lists. Watch complaint rates – and act on them. Get to the bottom of what is causing the complaints and fix it.
• Not setting and maintaining customer expectations – Have a prominent privacy policy link that tells people exactly what you’re going to do with their data. Be crystal clear and transparent in all your sign up activities. Opt-in points should tell people exactly what they’re going to receive from a company, when they’re going to receive emails and how often. Send only what you say you are going to send – when you said you would.

I would add: Not offering immediate recognition – The outer envelope (the from/subject line) has an important job to do beyond enticing opens. It needs to provide Instant Recognition. Even if you have the correct permission, if they don’t immediately recognise you they’ll delete the email, or worse, they’ll hit the ‘report as spam’.

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Posted on March 14th, 2008 under HTML email newsletters, e-newsletter deliverability, email campaign measurement .
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