end the nightmares! 10 email deliverability myths debunked

IntroductionMost of the largest brands in the world encounter deliverability issues on a regular basis. These issues frequently lead to losses that can range from $50,000 to several million dollars depending on the industry and the average revenue of the marketer’s email program. Roughly 25% of all emails fail to reach the inbox1, and this is not surprising given how complicated email deliverability has become in the last few years. Reaching a consumer’s inbox is increasingly difficult – Internet Service Providers (ISPs) now have sophisticated reputation-tracking and blacklists have more power than ever before. In addition, most users have migrated to the 4 biggest ISPs (Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo), which means if you have a deliverability issue at just one of these ISPs, you could immediately see a huge decrease in revenue from your campaigns.

Deliverability issues are the stuff of marketing nightmares. Even the terminology is like something out of a horror film… (ahem... blacklisting, we’re looking at you). Like the scenes from our favorite horror movies, it is the unknown risks and causes of deliverability issues that often terrify marketers. For many, bulking and inboxing issues are as frightening as that mysterious shadow on the other side of the shower curtain. And just as some ghost stories reach epic proportions as they are passed around from campfire to campfire, the misconceptions surrounding the subject of email deliverability have become real whoppers.

As a leading Email Service Provider with a crack team of deliverability experts, we speak to tons of email marketers, and we’re sometimes surprised by the urban myths out there. Here are some of the recent deliverability rumors we’ve heard (grouped by subject matter), why we think they’re baloney, and why they may actually be harming your email program. Let’s shine the light, scatter those monsters, and de-bunk some myths, shall we?

1. Email Deliverability Review from the DMA’s Email Marketing Council

DELIVERABILITY

An email message reaching its intended recipients’ inboxes

An email message being trapped by spam filters and thus being prevented from reaching the inbox

An email address used by blacklists and ISPs to identify spammers. The two types of spam trap addresses include Inactive Recipients and Honey Pots

An email address that has not opened, clicked or purchased in 12 months or greater. This categorization is not as serious as Honey Pot

In email marketing, a list of companies who send unwanted or SPAM email. ISPs will typically block emails coming from companies who are blacklisted

An email address that has never been released to the outside world, nor subscribed to a marketer’s message. Blacklists use this spamtrap to catch marketers who fabricate addresses or have bought a list from a third party that utilizes unclean data

Inboxing

Bulking

Blacklisting

Spam Trap

Inactive Recipients

Honey Pot

Before we start, here are some terms you’re going to need to know, especially if you’re new to deliverability:

End the Nightmares!10 Email Deliverability Myths Debunked

page 3Glossary

MYTH #1Even with best practices, it’s impossible to get good inboxing rates on a consistent basis.

While reaching the inbox can sometimes seem more daunting than outrunning that guy from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there ARE specific steps you can take to improve your deliverability. If your inboxing rate is inconsistent, chances are you’re missing something – and that something is most likely mail stream separation. A lack of separation can result in mail stream contamination, which causes roughly 80% of marketers’ inboxing problems.

So what is Mail Stream Contamination?

Much like a car travels down a road to reach its destination, email campaigns travel on an Internet Protocol address (IP address) to reach recipients. Just as there are different types of cars that travel on any roads, there are different types of email campaigns that travel on an IP address (also known as a mail stream).

Running all of your email programs on one IP address can cause deliverability issues because when one mail stream runs into trouble with an ISP, it prevents ALL of your email campaigns from reaching the inbox. A failure in one campaign can cause gridlock for the rest of your programs.


page 4General Myths

EXAMPLE: Let’s say you are running four types of email programs over one IP address:

1) Retention

2) Marketing

3) 3rd Party (Co-reg, Rental, etc.)

4) Transactional (Order confirmations, etc)

Your retention and transactional programs are zooming along and racing straight into the inbox without any deliverability issues. Your marketing programs, on the other hand, receive some spam complaints that lead to bulking issues. When you run all of your program types over the same IP address, your marketing mail stream has just road-blocked all of the other programs – leading to intermittent inboxing.

If you have separate IP addresses per mail stream, even when your marketing mail stream is paralyzed by inboxing issues, the rest of your programs will continue to reach the inbox. Having a single dedicated IP address for all your email programs is not good enough anymore. To reach the inbox, you need to have separate IP addresses for each mail stream based on offer type and engagement. When you do this, you not only limit contamination across your programs, but you also make it easier to diagnose and fix any deliverability issue.

The Bottom Line: Having separate IP addresses per mail stream protects you from inboxing issues, keeps inboxing consistent, and improves your ability to find and fix problems when they do occur.

RetentionThird Party

MarketingRetention

MarketingRetention

Single Mail Stream

INTERSTATE

IP #1

OPENINTERSTATE

IP #1

RetentionRetention Retention

Third PartyThird Party

MarketingMarketing MarketingMarketing MarketingMarketing

INTERSTATE

IP #1

Marketing

Multiple Mail Streams

Retention

Third Party

OPENINTERSTATE

IP #2

OPENINTERSTATE

IP #3

OPENINTERSTATE

IP #4


page 5General Myths

MYTH #2Deliverability is all about subject lines and trigger words, right?

Once upon a time, this myth might have been closer to the truth. But today, deliverability is far more complicated, as ISPs have become increasingly sophisticated. Gone are the days when you could solve all of your deliverability problems by scanning subject lines and keywords for the word “Free”. Yes, you still need to be mindful of your content, but there are far more stumbling blocks now than there were a few years ago. Here are just a few:

Abuse Complaints(Spam)

Opens Click-ThroughRate (CTR)

Messages “Passed By” (If a subscriber interacts with the messages above and below yours, but does not engage with your message, the ISPs view this as a negative metric)

1. Sending Reputation ISPs measure several metrics that affect your sending reputation – which, in turn, affects your inboxing. The following metrics make-up your sending reputation:


page 6General Myths

2. Problematic URLs

ISPs will flag certain URLs commonly found in messages that generate excessive abuse complaints. Often when marketers run into this problem, it is not their own domain that is causing the issue. If you partner with other companies and run cross-promotional or co-registration programs to gain opt-in subscribers, you need to be careful that your partners have squeaky-clean reputations.

Since ISPs track domain reputation, you also need to worry about every company that your partner is cross-promoting with. If you are all linking to the same domain, the fates of your email programs are tied together. It is hard to know whether your partner’s partner is smart about email deliverability, so think carefully before linking to 3rd party companies in your email messages.


page 7General Myths

3. Link Shorteners As tempting as it may be to chop down that long link in your email to a nice short URL, link shorteners can impact your deliverability because even some of the most popular ones, such as bit.ly, may have been blacklisted at one point or another.

4. HTML-to-Text Ratio You need to have a good balance between images, text and links. Spammers like to use images to convey their message with a small amount of text, since the ISPs’ systems cannot “see” the words in the image. Too many images or too many links and too little text can lead to bulking issues.


page 8General Myths

5. DKIM and SPF compliance

Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) - a “digital signature” which allows an email client to verify that you are who you say you are - and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - which allows an email client to verify that you are sending from an authorized mail server – are methods of authentication that can help deliverability by verifying to ISPs that you are who you claim to be.

The Bottom Line: Deliverability has moved beyond trigger words and subject lines. If you want to improve your results, you’ll need to modernize your deliverability practices. This isn’t Rocky Horror Picture Show and we aren’t doing “The Time Warp”.


page 9General Myths

MYTH #3Deliverability best practices are different for B2B email marketing, as we send to different email clients.

Sorry, B2B marketers, you are not off the hook. Just because your emails are hitting an Outlook email box instead of Gmail, that doesn’t mean you can throw deliverability common sense out the window.

Outlook is powered by backend email servers. Blacklist providers are used on many of these backend email servers and corporate email systems, so if you are blacklisted, your marketing messages will not come through. In addition, you still need to worry about corporate SPAM traps and Outlook’s bulk folder. And many corporate email servers use anti-spam software, like Barracuda Networks, which use some of the same tactics as ISPs (sender reputation, html/text ratio, image analysis, URL block lists, etc.) to protect companies from spam.

The Bottom Line:The same deliverability best practices apply to B2B email marketing, so you need to keep your data clean, run permission-based programs, and continue to test and monitor campaign performance just like your B2C brethren.


page 10General Myths

Not so fast there, buddy. Yesmail’s initial testing on Outlook.com indicates that Outlook.com, Hotmail and MSN.com all utilize the same backend mailing infrastructure. This means that the same SPAM filters and scoring methodologies in place for Hotmail also apply to Outlook.com. So if you are inboxing at Hotmail, a good assumption (under the current infrastructure) is that you would also inbox at Outlook.com.

The Bottom Line: While Outlook.com is very new and Microsoft could certainly change things, for the time being, you can think of Outlook as a new skin of the Hotmail interface. Outlook.com may have gained 60 million users in record time (six months), but Hotmail.com still has hundreds of millions of users… so, YES, you still need to worry about Hotmail.com.

MYTH #4Now that Microsoft is promoting Outlook.com as their main email service, we don’t need to worry about Hotmail.com.


page 11Email Client Myths

Inboxing at Gmail is heavily based on user engagement, and it is one of the hardest ISPs to work with from a deliverability perspective. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to hit the inbox, it just means you need to do some extra work to get there. Bummer, we know.

A key strategy to fix bulking issues at Gmail is to bite the bullet and only mail the most engaged subscribers in your core program. When we say most engaged, we mean only those who have interacted with your mail programs in the past 90 to 180 days. Using this tactic, it will usually take about three to five mailings to see inbox placement for your core program. Once you start inboxing successfully, you’ll see inboxing rates go from 100% bulking to 10-15% inboxing. It’s important to ride out the same targeting strategy for another two to four campaigns until you see your inboxing go to 100% and stabilize.

Now, before you freak out, and start doing your best impression of Drew Barrymore in Scream, this doesn’t mean that you have to stop mailing anyone who hasn’t engaged recently, it just means that you need to separate these subscribers to another IP address. As you receive opens and clicks on this lower engagement IP, you can move these subscribers over to your engaged IP address, which will further improve engagement on your core program.

The Bottom Line: It’s not impossible to hit the Gmail inbox, but because Gmail is so heavily weighted by user engagement, you need to focus your core program on engaged users to avoid bulking issues.

MYTH #5There’s no way to get good inboxing at Gmail. We tested our message, which workedfine, but then we got bulked at Gmail on our very first send.


page 12Email Client Myths

MYTH #6Bulking can be easily solved by following best practices for a couple of sends. Then I can go back to my usual sending pattern.

Bulking issues can gnaw away at your bottom line faster than a 28 Days Later zombie can outrun a Night of the Living Dead zombie. And bulking issues take time to correct – in our experience it can take anywhere from 48 hours to 14 days to fix a bulking issue depending on the ISP, so not only are you losing revenue from your email campaigns during the time you are bulking, but also while you are fixing the problem.

Here is a real world example to demonstrate how quickly a bulking issue at ONE ISP can add up.

A Fortune 50 marketer typically sends 4 campaigns per week. However, this marketer has been blocked at Gmail for all of its campaigns sent within the past week.

Average weekly revenue – 4 campaigns x $250,000 = $1,000,000Revenue Loss due to a Bulking Issue at Gmail - $1,000,000 x 20% (GMAIL Audience) = $200,000

This Fortune 50 marketer lost $200,000 in revenue in only one week as a result of a single Gmail bulking issue. It is easy to see how deliverability issues can quickly translate into revenue losses.

The Bottom Line: Can you really afford to knowingly go back to the pattern that caused your bulking issues? We’re guessing not, unless you enjoy having uncomfortable conversations with your CEO.


page 13Blacklisting Myths

MYTH #7So I’m bulking, but that doesn’t matter if I just acquire new subscribers.

You know when you are watching a horror movie and the heroine runs up the stairs instead of out the front door? Yeah... this myth is kind of like that. Bulking does matter and acquiring new subscribers is not going to help you much. The fact that you are bulking means that, from a program perspective, you are doing something wrong. Adding new subscribers is like trying to fix a clogged drain by stuffing more debris in the pipe. If your emails have already started to bulk, then sending to an ever-increasing number of subscribers is only going to make matters worse as more of your emails are treated as spam, until 100% are blocked.

When you are bulking, you need to take a step back and diagnose the issue. Look at your subscriber data to gauge engagement, look at your content to identify poor deliverability practices and look for problematic URLs that contribute to major issues.

The Bottom Line: A big push for acquiring new subscribers is not going to fix your bulking issues - focus on it after you’ve fixed your deliverability problems.



MYTH #8If we get blacklisted, we can just change our domain name or move IPs, right?

Oh geez, no! This is the King Kong of dangerous, damaging myths for multiple reasons. Blacklists monitor both IPs and domain names, so moving IPs is not going to solve your problem. Even if it did provide a temporary fix, it is still a bad idea as you haven’t fixed the underlying problem. For example, if the reason for your blacklisting was emailing spam-traps, you would soon end up right back on the blacklist after you moved your IPs or changed your domain name – a lot of work and time wasted for nothing. In addition, you would lose any sender reputation that you had built up on your old domain and IP address, as well as any brand trust you had with your active email subscribers.

When you find yourself on a blacklist, the proper response is to spend time understanding and fixing the root cause of the problem before you even talk to a blacklist about being removed from its database. Based on our experience, it usually takes between 24 hours to three or four business days to remove a blacklisting depending on the list and the issue.

The Bottom Line: Changing your domain name or moving IPs will only compound your deliverability problems, not solve them.



MYTH #9Companies with small distribution lists have a lesser chance of reaching email inboxes.

In this case, the old adage “Size Matters” doesn’t apply. When it comes to inboxing, ISPs see no difference between sending 100,000 emails or 1,000,000 emails. ISPs will not penalize a small company based on the size of its distribution list .

There are a few instances when companies with small distribution lists need to be careful. List size can become a problem when you send so much email that recipients ignore your message or mark it as SPAM. Or, on the flip side, if you send so few emails that you cannot develop a sender reputation or subscribers forget about you.

The Bottom Line: Inboxing is a ratio-based game.


page 16List Management Myths

MYTH #10Data hygiene doesn’t work. I use data hygiene and still got blacklisted.

Data hygiene is an extremely important step that you MUST take to avoid ending up on a blacklist, but it is not the ONLY step. Data hygiene will get rid of misspelled addresses, honey pots, and inactive addresses, but it, alone, will not reduce the risk of a blacklisting by 100%. To protect yourself, you need to think about other deliverability factors like email design, engagement, content and permission based practices.

Need another reason to keep your data shiny and clean? Data hygiene can also improve your inboxing. Keeping your data clean is vital to sender reputation. When you email a large number of inactive subscribers, the ISPs see that your ratio of volume to engagement is low and may decide to send you to the dreaded spam folder. Not only that, but by removing inactive subscribers, you also save some money by sending fewer emails. Every year, over 30% of people change their email address or become inactive.2 So removing inactive emails can have a great effect on your deliverability and ROI.

The Bottom Line: Data hygiene alone will not guarantee that you will avoid blacklisting, but it does significantly reduce the risk and is a process that should not be skipped.

2. DMNews, The list churn epidemic: how to diagnose, treat and immunize your database, Sept 2010.


page 17List Management Myths

SummaryWhile email deliverability can seem like a hairy nightmare, you CAN contain the beast by following some simple best practices. Deliverability can be complex and it is certainly important, but it shouldn’t be confusing or induce screaming.

Here are some action items to keep your programs on track:

1. Ensure your IP addresses are being scanned at Spamhaus EVERY 24 HOURS (at least).

2. Generate inbox placement reports at ISPs BEFORE every campaign (at least 72 hours prior).

3. Ensure your mail streams are separated out onto DEDICATED IP ADDRESSES.

4. Perform hygiene on your data at least once EVERY 6-12 MONTHS.

5. Have a proactive contingency plan in place. Know your next steps if a blacklisting or bulking issue occurs.

It’s human nature to be afraid of the mysterious, but now that we’ve cleared some things up for you and given some clear action items we hope you won’t feel so lost in the dark.


page 18Summary

end the nightmares! 10 email deliverability myths debunked

Technology

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blacklistedan email

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