eloqua demystifies email deliverability
DESCRIPTION
An overview of the factors that impact email deliverability and what you can do to improve your reputation and sender score.TRANSCRIPT
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Demystifying Email Deliverability
Dennis Dayman
Chief Deliverability and Privacy Officer, Eloqua
#DELIVERIT
Demystifying Email Deliverability
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Junk
Inbox
Agenda
What is a Sender Score or Reputation?
What are the factors in that Score?
How to improve them?
Deliverability 101
Complaints, Bounces, Spam Trap, Volumes, List
Management, and Content
What does it cost me?
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What is a Sender Score?
Sender Score is a credit score. “Reputation”
Just like when the dealership your getting a car loan from checks your financial score
Reputation comes down to what other people think of your email methods.
What is email based on?Complaints
Bounce Rate• Hard
• Block
• Backlistings
Volumes
Spamtraps
Why is it Important?
In 2009, an estimated 95% of all email was classified as SPAM
Because of increasingly aggressive filtering technologies
• Forgeries, Content Hijackings, growing botnets, etc
On average, 27.6% of commercial emails sent to business
addresses don't reach the inbox. - Return Path (2009)
In North America, only 80% of legitimate email is delivered to
the Inbox - Return Path’s Biannual report on message deliverability
90% of delivery issues are related to senders behaviors and NOT
content – George Bilbrey, Return Path
Email Deliverability 101
Complaints
Bounces
Spam Trap
Volumes
List Management
Content
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Complaints
#1 most important factor in reputation
Human response to unwanted mail
Receivers notices back to senders
Feedback Loops
Very low threshold
0.01% of all email sent in 24 hour period
Email Clients
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What You Can Do – Monitor Complaint Rates
SPAM Unsubscribe Report
Remember keep under 0.01%
Trend over time
Review ALL changes when things go wrong
Email Deliverability 101
Complaints
Bounces
Spam Trap
Volumes
List Management
Content
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All About Bounces
High bounces signal bad lists or list management
practices
Indicative of spammers
Send to as many addresses as possible
No regard for valid of addresses
Don’t stay around for reporting
Very hard for receiver to differentiate between bad
list management and actual spamming
Dealing with Bounces
Hard Bounce
Bad email addresses
Soft Bounces
Mailbox full
Blocks/Spam
Content
URL
Technical Failures
Server down
Out of Offices
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What You Can Do – Spam Traps
Remove them? How?
Don’t buy *random* lists
Ask for data history if you buy list
Get SLA’s
Watch e-pending services
Remove inactive accounts
Quality over Quantity
Run re-Confirmation processes
Use confirmed opt-in in at capture
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Email Deliverability 101
Complaints
Bounces
Spam Trap
Volumes
List Management
Content
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Volumes
Volume is not in itself good or bad, but is an
important part of the overall reputation algorithm.
A higher score equates to larger volume monitored
by the Sender Score Reputation Network.
= More to measure you on
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What You Can Do - Volumes
Do not send too frequently or randomly
Send a steady, consistent volume
Send from clean shared range if low volumes
Create multiple interests
Newsletter
Marketing
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Email Deliverability 101
Complaints
Bounces
Spam Trap
Volumes
List Management
Content
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List Management
Send to those who asked to receive your email
People will complain if they don’t know who you are
and did NOT request the content
Frequency and Relevancy
Recipients should see what they signed up for and at
what frequency they signed up for it
Meet their expectations of what they signed up for
Know your subscriber
Use personalization. Read their digital body language
Segment & target
What You Can Do - List Management
Ensure you don’t look like a spammer when delivering to
non-existent accounts
Spammers batch and blast to the same list every time
Old accounts are sometimes re-used as spamtraps 18-24 months later
Remove bad email addresses
Reduce the amount of complaints against your IP
Watch your spam unsubscribe reports regularly for trends
Remove contacts that don’t click-through
Ensures spam trap hits are low
Don’t buy lists or buy from trusted sources
Perform opt-in
Send email confirmations
Activity filters
Remove inactive contacts from your database
Email Deliverability 101
Complaints
Bounces
Spam Trap
Volumes
List Management
Content
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Content
Content is still important, but not as much as in the past when it comes to “sounding” like a spammer
Content preview testing
Relevancy
Call to action
Image to text ratio
What You Can Do – Content
Personalization
Inserting a person's name into an email increases open
rates by as much as 10%. - Jupiter Research (2006)
Don’t include video, flash scripts or forms in email
Most are blocked by email clients for security
Spam filtering is more likely to occur because of
HTML coding than the words in your email.
- George Bilbrey, iMediaConnection (2006)
Make sure your content is readable…
On mobile devices
In preview panes
With images OFF
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Content Preview Example
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Why Do You Care?
Inquiries
MQL
SAL
SQL
Wins
2,000
Model = $200K Average Deal Size
54%
53%
26%
80
43
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6
4%
$1.2 Million
Stage Volume Conversion Rates
Eloqua
Emails Delivered 200,000 1% to Inquiry
Emails Sent 220,000 73 Sender Score
Inquiries
MQL
SAL
SQL
Wins
1,800
54%
53%
26%
Stage Volume Conversion Rates
72
39
21
5
4%
$1.0 million
The Competition
Emails Delivered 180,000 1% to Inquiry
66 Sender ScoreEmails Sent 220,000
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Why Do You Care?
Inquiries
MQL
SAL
SQL
Wins
2,000
Model = $200K Average Deal Size
54%
53%
26%
80
43
23
6
4%
$1.2 Million
Stage Volume Conversion Rates
Eloqua
Emails Delivered 200,000 1% to Inquiry
Emails Sent 220,000 73 Sender Score
Inquiries
MQL
SAL
SQL
Wins
1,800
54%
53%
26%
Stage Volume Conversion Rates
72
39
21
5
4%
$1.0 million
The Competition
Emails Delivered 180,000 1% to Inquiry
66 Sender ScoreEmails Sent 220,000
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Digital Body Language™
Drives cleaner leads to website
Who opened?
Who clicked? Where?
Who’s active? Who’s not?
What’s most important to them?
Segmentation and relevancy
Nurture
Integration
Deliverability PLUS+
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What else does Eloqua do to help
Provide dedicated or shared IP’s/Branding
Dedicated Delivery and Privacy Team
24x7 Monitoring
Automatically suppress / report hard bouncebacks
Bounceback History Report
Automatically suppress / report ISP based complaints
SPAM Unsubscribe List report
Suppress known bad spelling, known SPAM traps, high
level complainers, FCC Wireless Suppression list
Deliverability Testing through Return Path
Email and Privacy Certification
What you can do
Monitor IP reputationhttp://www.senderscore.org
• Create a FREE account
• Have you IP or Domain ready
Monitor complaint rates and adjustTrend in your email applications
Remove them
Monitor hard bounce rates and adjustAre you being seen as spam or spammer?
Keep lists clean and relevantRemove inactive
Quality over Quantity
Getting to the Inbox
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Social Contact Info
Dennis Dayman
Twitter: ddayman
Blog: http://www.deliverability.com
Q&A