• by November 13, 2002

What’s the biggest challenge permission email marketers face today? Most say it’s Spam, some argue it’s the poor quality of email lists, others maintain it’s poor targeting solutions. But a new study shows that email’s biggest problem is actually much more basic.

Email solutions provider Silverpop today announced the results of a study that exposes one of the most overlooked causes of reduced response rates for permission email marketers: “broken” or unreadable HTML email messages.

While most marketers generally understand that broken emails can lower response rates, undermine customer relationships and weaken brand value, few realize the true prevalence of broken emails. The new Silverpop study titled The Broken Link – What Do Recipients Really See? shows that 42% of the HTML emails reviewed were difficult to read due to errors, such as missing graphics and raw code displayed. 13% of these emails had extremely disruptive errors or were completely indecipherable.

“Many email marketers we work with are not aware of the challenges and opportunities around broken HTML emails,” says Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop. “Some assume that HTML works consistently across all email programs. Others know of the problem but assume that nothing can be done about it, and still others assume their service provider will find a solution.”

The study represents the largest companies by revenue from nine major industries. More than 400 companies were initially included in the study, and nearly 1400 emails were analyzed in 9 of the most popular email programs. Of the nearly 700 HTML emails reviewed, almost half contained major errors such as missing graphics or raw HTML code.

The most dramatic examples of broken emails occurred on the B2B side in Lotus Notes 5.0, and on the B2C side in AOL versions 4.0 and 5.0. AOL 4.0 and 5.0 have a combined subscription of 7.5 million users according to eStats 2001 research, and Lotus Notes has over 70 million users according to IDC Research. In these two environments, 90% of the HTML emails reviewed contained disruptive errors. That translates into 70 million people who are not able to read messages sent to them by vendors and business partners.

"Nearly every email marketer we work with is focused on ways to improve response and conversion rates by avoiding spam filters, more granular targeting, and fine-tuning offers and supporting creative," said Aberdeen research director Kent Allen. "These issues must be addressed, but a key take-away from this study is that properly formatted HTML messages can improve response rates from 10% to as high as 40%."

In the process of studying reception, Silverpop’s research revealed a number of additional interesting statistics on the use of email marketing best practices, such as personalization and confirmations. These results, along with many other detailed statistics, will appear in the full report, which will be released on November 19, 2002. The report also will be distributed to attendees of the @d:tech New York conference next week.