Top Tactics to Improve Email
Relevancy and Deliverability
#Email2011
Sergio Balegno, Director of Research
MarketingSherpa / MECLABS Primary Research @SergioBalegno
Jeffrey Rice, Research Analyst
MarketingSherpa / MECLABS Primary Research @WJeffreyR
Tom Sather, Director Professional Services Return Path
@ReturnPath
#Email2011
#Email2011
• Overview of email marketing research for 2011 • Top challenges facing email marketers
• Relevancy and Deliverability – how they go hand-in-hand
• How marketers improved deliverability using relevancy as a catalyst • What you can do now to improve email success metrics
• 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report
• 8th annual study of more than 1,100 email marketers • 150 charts and hundreds of marketer insights
• New research and insights for accelerating email performance
• As mature tactic, improvements now measured in incremental steps • Combining multiple improvement tactics accelerates performance
• Unique research perspectives
• The impact of email marketing maturity on success • Three dimensional views of top email tactics
• All new metrics and benchmarking data
#Email2011
Relevancy will be the most significant challenge
to email marketing effectiveness in 2011
• Q. How significant are the
following challenges to email marketing effectiveness
• 65% say targeting recipients with
highly relevant content is a very significant challenge
• 39% say improving deliverability a
Relevancy means sending the right message to the
right person at the right time
• Subscribers are inundated,
more selective of messages they open and read
• About half of email marketers
still blasting subscribers with irrelevant messages
• Irrelevancy is the #1 reason
#Email2011
Why relevancy is the most significant challenge
Three dimensional view of relevancy tactics
• High degree of difficulty to
implement relevancy tactics
• Relevancy requires segmentation • “The most difficult issue we're facing is
tracking a complex set of users with different needs so we can effectively deliver targeted content.”
• Relevancy requires content • “Should we be content creators or
aggregators? No time for executives to write down thoughts so we can
Collecting segmentation data for personalization
• Organizations collecting subscriber
data for personalization, by phase of email marketing maturity
• Twice as many marketers in strategic
phase track behavior and activity data than in trial phase
• Strategic marketers also much more
#Email2011
Using segmentation for content personalization
• Data used to personalize email
goes beyond subscriber name
• Used to create message or deliver
content of interest to subscriber
• Minimal data available? Use what
Case study: Relevancy through personalization
• Health and wellness retailer
moving from catalog-based to an e-commerce strategy.
• Tested and established a product
#Email2011
Proven Success
• Product recommendations lifted
the website's conversion rate to 6.2% from 5.6% year over year.
• 7.8% of people who clicked
Challenge
• How to extend the value of the
#Email2011
Solution: Transactional Email
• Confirmation email benefits
• Customers expected to receive • Encourage repeat sales
Execution
• Establish recommendation system
• Test recommendation system
• Redesign confirmation email to
include HTML Format
• Company logo and tagline in header • Order confirmation and date in header • Thank you message
• Contact information
#Email2011
Results
• 400-500 customers per month click
the recommendations in confirmation emails
• 19% of those who do click a
recommendation complete another purchase
• Recommendations in transaction
How relevancy translates into deliverability –
an example:
• Relevant content boosts activity
-increases open and click rates…
• Increased open and click rates
improve sender reputation…
• Improved sender reputation reduces
false-positive spam detection…
• Reduced spam detection increases
#Email2011
Trends in deliverability –
I’ve got some good news and some bad news
• Improvements in deliverability
offset by continued challenges
• Making it into the inbox
• “Strict adherence to CAN-SPAM ACT and constant purging of inactive subscribers has helped significantly.” • Not making it into the inbox
Three dimensional view of deliverability tactics
• “Fast and easy” often trumps
effectiveness
• Removing inactive subscribers
from list is the most used but not the most effective tactic
• Dedicated IP address most
Inbox
Placement
Rate
(% of email
messages that
are delivered
straight to the
inbox)
#Email2011
Shocked?
#Email2011
It’s not up
to your
#Email2011
Know Your Inbox Placement Rate
(Ask yourself the question – Delivered Where?)
#Email2011
Monitor
your
Reputation!
Get a Seed List
Monitoring Tool!
#Email2011
Win Back Inactives
Manage Frequency
#Email2011
8
Maintain a permanent home
#Email2011