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Email Deliverability:The Battle to the Inbox

Arend Henderson, Chief Analytics Officer

Q Interactive

Tuesday, February 26, 2008


2

Q Interactive Overview

Connect advertisers and consumers using

Consumer Requested Marketing

Relevancy, Permission, Privacy

10 Years’ expertise in email marketing

Work with more than 1,500 leading brands

ADVERTISERS

Hundreds of

Advertisers

CONSUMER

REQUESTED

MARKETING

100 Million

Requests

Affirmative Consent

Permission & PrivacyNETWORK PARTNERS

BRANDED SITES

10 Million Unique

Consumers Monthly

THE Q NETWORK

True

ConversionENGINE


3

The Battle to the Inbox:High level issues affecting deliverability

Authentication

Hygiene &

Suppression

QA –

Rendering & Delivery

ISP Compliance /

Header Info.

SPAM Scoring

Legislation &

Regulation

Whitelisting &

Reputation Services

Creative / CopyOffer Quality

Targeting &

Segmentation

Complaints

Filters

False Positives

Personal Adaptive Filters Inbox

Delivery

Monitoring

Unsub

Processing

Complaint

Feedback

Loops

Bounce

Processing

Hygiene & eCOAResponse ProcessingModeling & Analytics


4

The Battle to the InboxHigh level issues affecting deliverability

ISPs and reputation services are increasingly looking to

consumer complaints as the primary measure used to

filter "unwanted email” and not just spam

False Positives

Correlation of response and complaint is a

fundamental weakness of complaint rate filtering

Consumer satisfaction will increasingly drive the

deliverability of your email program

The definition of spam has changed from permission to

perception based

Strong permission standards and list hygiene practices

aren't enough anymore


5

Anatomy of a “Spam” Complaint

Consumer feedback mechanism used by ISPs

and Reputation services to filter “unwanted” email

Therefore, managing complaints and

understanding their cause is increasingly

important to ensure ongoing deliverability


6

Issues affecting deliverability: Filters#1: Spam Filter

What is the definition of Spam?

n. Unsolicited email, often of a commercial nature,sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists,individuals or newsgroups; junk email.

- Dictionary.com


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Use of Complaints By ISPs andReputation Services to Filter Email

“Spam is any message or posting,

regardless of its content, that is sent to

multiple recipients who have not specifically

requested the message.”

- Yahoo Mail Tutorial

“Messages you report as junk are used to

improve our junk email filters, and can help to

lessen the amount of junk email you get in your

inbox.”

- MSN help


8

FACT: Your email is spam if thereceiver thinks it is

What drives consumers to hit that button?

Why Have You Clicked the ‘Report Spam’ or ‘Junk’ Button?

I didn’t sign up to receive email from the sender

The email received was not of interest to me

I receive too much email from the sender

I receive too much email from all senders

I found the email offensive

I do not recall reporting email from the sender as

Junk/Spam

MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, September-November 2007

0% 20% 40% 60%

25%

41%

20%

15%

13%

52%


9



Consumers Reporting

Emails That Aren’t Spam


21% knowingly report

email that is not spam

as such

No

51%

Don’t know/

No opinion

28%

Yes

21%


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Why Did Consumers Think Would Happen When They Clicked ‘Spam’?

Tell my email service to filter out emails

from that mailer in the future

Be unsubscribed from all email from the sender

Tell the mailer that I didn’t find that specific email

useful so that they would do a better job of mailing me

File a complaint about that specific email


0% 20% 40% 60%

47%

21%

8%

56%


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ISPs and reputation services are increasinglylooking to consumer complaints as the primarymeasure used to filter "unwanted email” andnot just spam

Consumer satisfaction will increasingly drivethe deliverability of your email program

The definition of spam has changed frompermission to perception based

Strong permission standards and list hygienepractices aren't enough anymore

FACTS to Face


12

Clickthroughs

Complaints

Member Value

Fundamental weakness ofcomplaint rate filtering

Correlation of response and complaint

means most valuable consumers

generate the most complaints/feedback


13

Percentage of

Companies Affected

by False Positives

False positive email filtering

Legitimate email that’s misidentified

as spam by ISPs

100 Consumer and

business emailers –

49% were affected by

false positives

49%51%

MarketingSherpa and Pivotal

Veracity, Emailer Practice and false

Positive Study, November 2007


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Understanding complaints

What does all this mean?

Complaints are a potentially powerful tool for marketers

and ISPs to provide more value to their shared

consumers

Consumer vs. Industry perception of a spam complaints

Correlation of response and complaint is a fundamental

weakness of complaint rate filtering

Challenge to the industry to make this increasingly

important metric more meaningful and effective


15

Practical approaches tomanaging complaint rates today

Top 3 reasons consumers said they reported

email as SpamI don't remember signing up to receive email from the sender

Too much email from the sender

Email was not of interest to me

13%

15%

20%

25%

41%

52%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

I do not recall reporting email from

the sender as Junk/Spam

I found the email offensive

I receive too much email from all

senders

I received too much email from the

sender

The email received was not of

interest to me

I didn't sign up to receive email

from the sender


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I don't remember signing up toreceive email from the sender…

Lead Generation - Managing list sources

Don't simply buy names/addresses

Establish a relationship and set consumer expectations

Work with providers that value consumer permission/recognition

Permission Practices

Double vs. Single Opt-in

Double opt-in an unnecessary and ineffective consumer hurdle

in our experience

Establishing expectations with consumer about what they're

going to receive is most important

Contact Strategies

Rapid deployment of welcome message/auto responder and

consistent contact important to maintain the relationship

Be consistent in sending under the brand that the consumer

gave permission


17

Collecting the right information

Name and email

address is not

enough!

Qualify

Set communication

expectations

Find out why they

are interested in your

company


18

Email was not of interest to me…

RelevancyDemo/Geo/Behavior Segmentation

Integrating complaint data to measure

campaign effectiveness

The complaint/response correlation conundrum

Demographical

Geographical

Behavioral

Send

emailComplaints

received

Integrate

complaint data

Send

email


19

Too much email from the sender

Behavior based volume modeling

What is "too much" varies by consumer

Look at how consumers react to continually

optimize volume

Q's approach

Customer Engagement

Em

ail

Fre

qu

en

cy

Increase frequency

to most engaged

customers


20

Summary

Get experts internally or outsource to make sure your

technology or platform is properly configured.

Your email is spam if the receiver thinks it is.

Permission and best practices are only guidelines.

Understand the drivers of consumer complaints and

take steps to address them now.

As an industry lets work together to make complaint

based filtering more effective.


21

Credits/Thank You

Arend Henderson, Q Interactive

312-224-5074

[email protected]

email deliverability: the battle to the inbox€¦ · double vs. single opt-in double opt-in an...

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