Nearly 20 Percent of Email Campaign Messages Fail To Deliver

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Despite minor improvements, about 1-in-5 commercial, permissioned emails still fail to reach consumers' inboxes, according to new research from email and reputation management firm Return Path.

In the second half of 2009, 19.9% such emails never reached consumer inboxes in the United States and Canada -- representing only a slight improvement over the first half of the year when 20.7% such emails missed their target.

By contrast, European inbox placement rates fared markedly better with just 15% of requested, permissioned emails never reaching consumer inboxes.

In the United States and Canada, 3.5% of commercial, permissioned emails were delivered to a "junk" or "bulk" email folder, while 16.3% were missing or not delivered at all -- with no hard bounce message or other notification of non-delivery.

"Many senders believe that their email campaigns are achieving a 95% to 98% delivery rate," said George Bilbrey, co-founder and president of Return Path. However, "senders still do not have the correct data to accurately determine true ROI."

"If senders and ESPs count only their hard bounces as emails that failed to reach consumers, they're not getting an accurate metric as to how many emails actually made it into subscriber inboxes," Bilbrey added. "Ultimately, only emails that reach a subscriber's inbox can be opened, clicked and converted into a loyal and active customer. Remember, sent minus bounce does not equal delivered."

Also of note, ISPs vary in terms of how many permissioned emails successfully reach consumer inboxes.

Stateside, BellSouth and Google's Gmail were the toughest on permissioned marketers, as 21% of emails sent to Gmail addresses failed to reach users' inboxes.

Before the first half and second half of last year, BellSouth had a notable increase in non-delivery rates. The phone company increased its non-delivered rates to inboxes from just 14% in the first half of 2009 to 22% in the July to December time period.

"The reason non-delivered rates vary is because each ISP has their own criteria for inbox placement," said Bilbrey.

3 comments about "Nearly 20 Percent of Email Campaign Messages Fail To Deliver".
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  1. Jonathan Mirow from BroadbandVideo, Inc., February 3, 2010 at 12:29 p.m.

    That's because most of us our here in webland have discovered an amazing technique for dealing with the flood of permission-based crap that lands in our overflowing inboxes on a daily basis - it's called "delete".

  2. Kyros Asfis from Dfactory, February 3, 2010 at 4:25 p.m.

    People due to the email overflow tend to be much more delegate with what are receiving and finally reading so as Jonathan said most of them prefer to delete

  3. Ken Hablow, February 4, 2010 at 11:58 a.m.

    The delete key is not the issue. Any computer savvy person can add a sender to a blocked list either locally on their computer or through a control panel on the email server. Many large corporations either block bulk email senders altogether or filter out HTML. Many bulk email senders require a text version for a multipart email so at least the text goes through. Some will even allow text only.

    Most public ISPs first use a third party scanner to send known spammers into cyberspace. Then they have an in-house scanner that sends potential spam to a Trash or Spam folder on the email server. Most people do not know that can look at these and move ones that want to their inbox then add the sender to a White List, or Always Allow list. Since all filters use ever- changing algorithms, good emails often get blocked. I have the spam settings at my ISP set relatively high and look at the Trash folder every couple of days. I generally find at least one sender who I have to add to my Always Allow list.

    If an ISP receives too many emails from the same domain or sender it will start to block them. That is built into the algorithm. That can happen when one email campaign has many recipients at the same domain location or by chance, too many emails from the same sender by chance, happen to go to the same ISP. Constant Contact uses a unique “from” domain for each account – others do not and are more susceptible to being trapped.

    Outlook 2007 has a Junk E-mail folder that works the same way. I have found this is about 50% effective. Even though I have it turned off, which means it should only block email addresses in the Do Not Allow list, it often blocks emails I want, regardless of the rules I have set up. The same can be said for the Norton Spam filter.

    Given most people have no idea of how to check any of the above, it is amazing as many bulk emails get through as they do.

    One of my accounts averages about a 40% open rate on a weekly email. Not too shabby.

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