Email Deliverability: The Battle to the Inbox Arend Henderson, Chief Analytics Officer Q Interactive Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Q Interactive Overview Connect advertisers and consumers using Consumer Requested Marketing Relevancy, Permission, Privacy THE Q NETWORK NETWORK PARTNERS Permission & Privacy ADVERTISERS True Conversion ENGINE CONSUMER REQUESTED MARKETING Hundreds of Advertisers BRANDED SITES 10 Million Unique Consumers Monthly Affirmative Consent 100 Million Requests 10 Years expertise in email marketing Work with more than 1,500 leading brands 2
The Battle to the Inbox: High level issues affecting deliverability Legislation & Regulation QA Rendering & Delivery Authentication Hygiene & Suppression Whitelisting & Reputation Services ISP Compliance / Header Info. SPAM Scoring Complaints Filters False Positives Personal Adaptive Filters Inbox Delivery Monitoring Creative / Copy Offer Quality Targeting & Segmentation Complaint Feedback Loops Bounce Processing Unsub Processing Modeling & Analytics Response Processing Hygiene & ecoa 3
The Battle to the Inbox High level issues affecting deliverability ISPs and reputation services are increasingly looking to consumer complaints as the primary measure used to filter "unwanted email and not just spam False Positives Correlation of response and complaint is a fundamental weakness of complaint rate filtering Consumer satisfaction will increasingly drive the deliverability of your email program The definition of spam has changed from permission to perception based Strong permission standards and list hygiene practices aren't enough anymore 4
Anatomy of a Spam Complaint Consumer feedback mechanism used by ISPs and Reputation services to filter unwanted email Therefore, managing complaints and understanding their cause is increasingly important to ensure ongoing deliverability 5
Issues affecting deliverability: Filters #1: Spam Filter What is the definition of Spam? n. Unsolicited email, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals or newsgroups; junk email. - Dictionary.com 6
Use of Complaints By ISPs and Reputation Services to Filter Email Spam is any message or posting, regardless of its content, that is sent to multiple recipients who have not specifically requested the message. - Yahoo Mail Tutorial Messages you report as junk are used to improve our junk email filters, and can help to lessen the amount of junk email you get in your inbox. - MSN help 7
FACT: Your email is spam if the receiver thinks it is What drives consumers to hit that button? Why Have You Clicked the Report Spam or Junk Button? I didn t sign up to receive email from the sender The email received was not of interest to me I receive too much email from the sender I receive too much email from all senders I found the email offensive I do More not data recall on this reporting topic email from the sender as Junk/Spam 25% 20% 15% 13% 41% 52% 0% 20% 40% 60% MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, September-November 2007 8
FACT: Your email is spam if the receiver thinks it is What drives consumers to hit that button? Consumers Reporting Emails That Aren t Spam 21% knowingly report email that is not spam as such No 51% Don t know/ No opinion 28% Yes 21% MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, September-November 2007 9
FACT: Your email is spam if the receiver thinks it is What drives consumers to hit that button? Why Did Consumers Think Would Happen When They Clicked Spam? Tell my email service to filter out emails from that mailer in the future 56% Be unsubscribed from all email from the sender Tell the mailer that I didn t find that specific email useful so that they would do a better job of mailing me 21% 47% File a complaint about that specific email 8% 0% 20% 40% 60% MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, September-November 2007 10
FACTS to Face ISPs and reputation services are increasingly looking to consumer complaints as the primary measure used to filter "unwanted email and not just spam Consumer satisfaction will increasingly drive the deliverability of your email program The definition of spam has changed from permission to perception based Strong permission standards and list hygiene practices aren't enough anymore 11
Fundamental weakness of complaint rate filtering Clickthroughs Complaints Member Value Correlation of response and complaint means most valuable consumers generate the most complaints/feedback 12
False positive email filtering Legitimate email that s misidentified as spam by ISPs Percentage of Companies Affected by False Positives 100 Consumer and business emailers 49% were affected by false positives 51% 49% MarketingSherpa and Pivotal Veracity, Emailer Practice and false Positive Study, November 2007 13
Understanding complaints What does all this mean? Complaints are a potentially powerful tool for marketers and ISPs to provide more value to their shared consumers Consumer vs. Industry perception of a spam complaints Correlation of response and complaint is a fundamental weakness of complaint rate filtering Challenge to the industry to make this increasingly important metric more meaningful and effective 14
Practical approaches to managing complaint rates today Top 3 reasons consumers said they reported email as Spam I don't remember signing up to receive email from the sender Too much email from the sender Email was not of interest to me I didn't sign up to receive email from the sender 52% The email received was not of interest to me 41% I received too much email from the sender I receive too much email from all senders I found the email offensive I do not recall reporting email from the sender as Junk/Spam 25% 20% 15% 13% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 15
I don't remember signing up to receive email from the sender Lead Generation - Managing list sources Don't simply buy names/addresses Establish a relationship and set consumer expectations Work with providers that value consumer permission/recognition Permission Practices Double vs. Single Opt-in Double opt-in an unnecessary and ineffective consumer hurdle in our experience Establishing expectations with consumer about what they're going to receive is most important Contact Strategies Rapid deployment of welcome message/auto responder and consistent contact important to maintain the relationship Be consistent in sending under the brand that the consumer gave permission 16
Collecting the right information Name and email address is not enough! Qualify Set communication expectations Find out why they are interested in your company 17
Email was not of interest to me Relevancy Demo/Geo/Behavior Segmentation Integrating complaint data to measure campaign effectiveness The complaint/response correlation conundrum Send email Complaints received Demographical Geographical Behavioral Integrate complaint data Send email 18
Too much email from the sender Behavior based volume modeling What is "too much" varies by consumer Look at how consumers react to continually optimize volume Q's approach Email Frequency Increase frequency to most engaged customers Customer Engagement 19
Summary Get experts internally or outsource to make sure your technology or platform is properly configured. Your email is spam if the receiver thinks it is. Permission and best practices are only guidelines. Understand the drivers of consumer complaints and take steps to address them now. As an industry lets work together to make complaint based filtering more effective. 20
Credits/Thank You Arend Henderson, Q Interactive 312-224-5074 ahenderson@qinteractive.com 21