Email is Getting Smarter, Are You?
Why Email Intelligence is Crucial to Marketing Success NOWTom SatherSr. Director, [email protected]: @ReturnPath#ReturnPathAMA
Poll #1
What type of deliverability issue(s) have you experienced? (check all that apply)
• Listed on a blacklist• Blocked by Mailbox Provider• Emails not rendering correctly• Complaints• Declining open/click thru rates• Emails are sent to spam folder•Other
Challenge Solution Result
Email Marketers Face Many Challenges
Throttling
Mobile
Audience
Spam Traps
Inbox Deliverabilit
y
Message Design
Targeting & Segmentati
on
Testing & Reporting
Creative Offers
List Acquisition
Compliance
Content Strategy
Managing Complaints
Spoofing Attacks on
Brand
IncreaseConversions
Ongoing Demand For
More!
SubscriberEngagemen
t
Problem #1: 1 in 5 Emails Never Reach the Inbox
Problem #2: Reputation Driving Poor Inbox Delivery
80,00
0The Number of People Everyday That Fall Victim to a Phishing Scam
Problem #3: Your Brand is Being Abused
Problem #4: There’s More Competition in the Inbox (and They’re Winning)
Email Marketing Analysis Today
Clicks & Opens
Email Intelligence: The Summit of Insights
Inbox Placeme
nt
Reputation
Brand Awarenes
s
Competitive
Intelligence
Insight
Clicks & Opens
Greater Insights
Traditional Approach With Email Intelligence (> 9,000)
Infrastructure:
User Engagement:• Panel Data• Read• Open• Delete• Reply• Add to Address Book
• DNS / FQDN• SPF / DKIM• DMARC• Rate Limiting• MX
• Forward• Move• MSFT SRD• Delete wo\ Open
Reputation: • Complaints• Unknown Users• Sending Volume• Blacklisting• Spam Traps• Blocked Mail• Content Filtered Mail• This is Not Spam• Trusted This is Not Spam• Trusted Complaints• URL Reputation• Frequency
Content: • Cloudmark• Content Similarity• Rendering• Pre-Delivery Filter Results
Competitive Intel:• Engagement• Reputation• Deliverability• Spoofing / Phishing
Placement: • Seed-based Delivery Monitoring
More Insights From Opens
Clicks & Opens
The Base: Using Opens and Clicks to Understand Customer Behavior
Understanding Your Audience: Opens by Device
Mobile Strategy? Data is Key
Retail: 40%Banking: 12%
Inbox Placeme
nt
Clicks & Opens
The Path of Success: Reach the Inbox
Inbox Placement Rate
Delivery Rate: # of emails sent - # of bounces / # of emails sent
Inbox Placement Rate: # of emails sent - # of bounces – emails delivered to spam / # of emails sent
Traditional Measurement:
The right metric:
“90% of Life is Just Showing Up” – So Should Your Emails
Inbox Placement: The Marketer Experience
Traditional Approach
With Email Intelligence
My opens declined, and I check my bounce reports.DO I have a
problem?
WHY do I have a problem?
I think it’s the content in my creative
HOW do I solve my problem?
No matter what I change in my content, my delivery rates won’t improve.
I now know my poor open and click rate is due to a delivery problem at Hotmail across a subset of recipients (not just inactive subscribers)
I know the issue at Hotmail is based on high complaints, high Hotmail Spam Fighter Program votes, and spam traps
Analyzing subscriber feedback shows issues a particular campaign and vintage.
Challenge Solution Result• Yahoo! & Hotmail flagged emails
• 75% were sent to bulk folders
• Deliverability averaged only 70%
• Sender Score (reputation)
at 30
•Management pressure to resolve ASAP
• Using Placement.EQ, Twitter discovered the root cause of reputation issues
• Placement.EQ identified complaint rates and infrastructure issues that needed to be fixed
• Increased Yahoo! delivery by 124%
• Hotmail deliverability improved to 100%
• Increased Sender Score by 40 points
• Jason reported excellent results to management
Twitter Case Study
“We are now getting near-perfect deliverability to Hotmail and have made significant improvements with Yahoo! Fixing our deliverability problems ended up being faster and easier than we had imagined.” —Jason Goldman
Director of Program ManagementTwitter
“Achieved ‘Near-Perfect’ Delivery”
Challenge Solution Result• Yahoo! & Hotmail flagged emails
• 75% sent to spam folders
• Inbox placement averaged only 70%
• Sender Score (reputation)
at 30
•Management pressure to resolve ASAP
• Using Placement.EQ, Twitter discovered the root cause of reputation issues
• Placement.EQ identified complaint rates and infrastructure issues that needed to be fixed
• Increased Yahoo! delivery by 124%
• Hotmail deliverability improved to 100%
• Increased Sender Score by 40 points
• Jason reported excellent results to management
Improving Inbox Placement:A Twitter Case Study“We are now getting near-perfect deliverability to Hotmail and have made significant improvements with Yahoo! Fixing our deliverability problems ended up being faster and easier than we had imagined.”
—Jason GoldmanDirector of Program Management
“Achieved ‘Near-Perfect’ Delivery”
Why are my emails landing in spam?Inbox
Placement
Reputation
Clicks & Opens
Managing Your Reputation
Why Are My Emails Landing in Spam? It’s Your Reputation
Monitor, Analyze, and Optimize Your Sending Reputation
• See how you are perceived by mailbox providers through your Sender Score• http://www.senderscore.org
• Dramatically increase placement rates by managing key drivers of your reputation:• User complaints• Spam trap hits• Bounced / Unknown users• Spam and content filtering• Mail rejected• Email volume spikes
The Most Important Reputation Metrics
Spam Traps
Subscriber Complaints
Ideal: 0
Ideal: .01% - .1%
What’s MY Reputation?Check yours at
SenderScore.org
Inbox Placement
Reputation
Brand Awareness
Clicks & Opens
Protecting Your Brand
Fraud + email = bad brand experience
Brand Protection: With Email Intelligence
• Visibility into all outbound email activity (int. & 3rd party)
• Proactively identify customer-targeted phishing attacks
• Brand consistency across all email communications
• Preserve Customer Loyalty and investment in your brand
Example of Phish
Suspicious message rate: Number of messages purporting to be from your domain that are potentially fraudulent
Phishing: What to Measure
Challenge Solution Result• Need to be sure authentication protocols were being followed across a range of groups
Use phishing reporting and blocking solutions to stop fraudulent email and fortify their brand from phishing
• Visibility into the authentication of all the sending platforms used by global properties to protect their brand from domain spoofing.
World’s Largest Hotel Group
“Anti-phishing solutions protects our brand reputation from abuse by phishers and spoofers. The revenue loss that would be incurred if our customers didn’t feel safe responding to our emails is impossible to calculate.”
Full visibility into email authentication and proactive blocking capabilities
—Kevin HickeyGlobal Manager Email Marketing
IHG
Inbox Placement
Reputation
Brand Awareness
Competitive Intelligence
Clicks & Opens
Marketers Are Primed For Solutions That Improve Their Measurement and Competitive Insight
Lack of demonstrated ROI on our email marketing efforts
Managing our marketing offers across multiple campaigns
Having adequate IT support for marketing purposes
Integration to other systems
Benchmarking our email performance to our industry peers
List turnover (i.e. subscriber data churning and going bad)
Managing the frequency of messages across all marketing channels
Creative content development
Analyzing campaign results
Knowing how to optimize/ improve our marketing programs
0% 10% 20% 30%
19%
19%
19%
19%
20%
20%
20%
21%
24%
26%
Top 10 Greatest Email Marketing Challenges - 2012
Email Marketing Measurement Imperative, Return Path, 2012
Which subject line performs better?
a) It’s on us! (Well, part of it…)b) Take 10% off – Hurry, Ends Sunday!
Which subject line performs better?
a) It’s on us! (Well, part of it…)b) Take 10% off – Hurry, Ends Sunday!
Answer: A had a read rate that was 290% higher than B
Which Was the Most Forwarded Campaign?
The J.C Penney email was forward more than twice as much as the Kohl’s email.
Winner:
Royal Caribbean“We want to be innovative and best in class within our industry and Inbox Insight is the only tool that lets us do that by showing us how competitive email programs are performing”
—Janet Bava Manager, Direct Marketing
Royal Caribbean
• Royal Caribbean spent a lot of time manually monitoring competitive email campaigns and were frustrated by the lack of engagement data on how competitors’ emails were performing.
• Had intense business pressure to send more mail
• Opens and clicks weren’t telling them the whole story of subscriber engagement
Challenge
• Used INBOX INSIGHT to benchmark their performance versus the competitors that matter most to them
• Gathered intelligence on how the frequency, targeting, subject lines, content, and engagement metrics of their own email campaigns compared to competitors.
Solution
• Increased frequency by 65%
while maintaining high level ofengagement• Doubled conversion rate• Decreased opt-out rates• Saved 30% of total
competitive intelligence time previously spent on manually pulling and analyzing competitive data
Result
Increased Frequency and Doubled Conversion Rate
A Mountain of Insights
Inbox Placeme
nt
Reputation
Brand Awarenes
s
Competitive
Intelligence
Insight
Clicks & Opens
Marketers Outperform With the Right Data
Providing Data-Driven Insights…
Serving over 2,000 leading brands globally including and 300 ISPs globally …
Thank You!
Tom Sather
Sr. Director, Research
Twitter: @tom_sather
@returnpath
Infographics, Research, and More:
http://www.returnpath.com/resources
Check Your Reputation Score:
http://www.senderscore.org