It's getting harder to deliver email, global study shows

With stricter filtering by Internet service providers and deteriorating reputations of some email senders, email deliverability dropped by six percent to 76.5 percent in the second half of 2011, email certification firm Return Path said.

 

Return Path disclosed the findings in its Global Email Deliverability Benchmark report, which monitored data from 1.1 million campaigns, according to E-Consultancy.com.

 

"The study suggests that an increased volume of emails also contributed to the fall in delivery rates, as overwhelmed consumers are more likely to mark emails as spam rather than unsubscribing," it said.

 

The study covered 142 ISPS in North America, Central and Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific territories from July through December of 2011.

 

In the Asia-Pacific region, deliverability rates declined by 14 percent in the second half of 2011 with only 67 percent of all mail reaching its intended inbox destination.

 

Only 72 percent of emails made it to the inbox in Central and Latin America.

 

As for the United Kingdom, 83 percent of marketing emails reached the inbox, with seven percent being delivered to the spam folder and 10 percent registered as missing or blocked.

 

North American inbox placement rates (IPR) experienced significant declines with an eight-percent drop, bringing in inbox placement rates closer to 79 percent.

 

Managing reputational factors

 

Return Path client services director for Northern Europe Richard Gibson said the key to improving deliverability rates was to manage reputational factors.

 

He said marketers need to own the factors that impact on their reputation, such as complaint rates, and work out why their emails aren’t making it to the inbox.

 

Also, he said marketers first need to look at their deliverability rates, then modify factors such as email frequency and management of old subscribers to improve their reputation with ISPs.

 

He said that while 100-percent IPR was achievable, brands need to be aware that ISPs are making it harder to get into the inbox.

 

Majority (53 percent) of companies that took part in the Econsultancy Email Marketing Census 2012 had indicated having a clean, up-to-date email list has the biggest impact on improving IPR.

 

The next most cited factors are focus on relevance of email to recipients (50 percent) and reputation of sender (38 percent).

 

Gmail's Priority Inbox

 

Meanwhile, in a separate study, Return Path analysed a sample of 40,000 Gmail mailboxes, and over 110 million messages from July 1 to December 31, 2011.

 

It found that 93 percent of all Gmail subscribers now have priority inbox enabled, up 15 percent from Return Path’s previous study.

 

But Gmail inbox placement rates declined to 79 percent with 21 percent of mail being delivered to the spam folder.

 

Out of the 79 percent of mail delivered to the inbox, only eight percent were marked priority, a 54-percent decline from Return Path’s previous study. — TJD, GMA News