About 20% of permission-based e-mails, on average, are treated by Internet service providers as spam, according to a new report.
Sound familiar? Well, it should. The number hasn’t significantly changed in years.
Deliverability consultancy Return Path published a study in 2006 saying e-mail non-delivery rates for its clients were 19.2% in the first half of that year, 15% in 2002 and 22% in 2004.
According to the new report by Pivotal Veracity and Goodmail, 5% of e-mail messages in a study of their clients’ programs ended up in spam folders, and 15% went unaccounted for, meaning they were probably blocked.
While it’s tempting to interpret these studies to mean ISPs have been consistently bad at distinguishing permission-based e-mail from spam, the likely reason is that most marketers have failed to improve their e-mail practices.
“You need to change the way you do business, something many marketers are not willing or able to do,” says Deirdre Baird, Pivotal Veracity CEO, adding that the problem often lies with senior management. “I think e-mail executives have a very hard time convincing senior executives, ‘We shouldn’t be mailing our customers four times a month just because we can and it’s cheap.’ ”
Moreover, she says, too many marketers look to place the blame for deliverability troubles anywhere but where blame should be placed — on themselves.
Sometimes, marketers blame their service providers for delivery troubles caused by their own bad practices and switch vendors.
“If you go from one ESP to another and continue the same practices, you’re going to have the same deliverability issues,” says Baird. “What matters is what you’re mailing and to whom.”
The top-three gauges ISPs use to determine an e-mailer’s reputation are the number of nonexistent addresses, or unknown users, a mailer attempts to reach, the number of spam traps the mailer hits, and the number of spam complaints generated from recipients.
“Maintaining a good e-mail reputation is like losing weight,” says Baird. “There isn’t a magic pill. Stop eating cake.”
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