2017 Deliverability Benchmark report

Return Path has released their 2017 Deliverability Benchmark Report. I haven’t had a chance to look at it, but did download it earlier today.
EContent has a summary of the article up, with the headline Research Finds Email Senders with Strong Subscriber Engagement Are Likely to See Less Email Delivered to Spam. Useful data points they pulled out include:

  • The increase in spam placement is somewhat offset by the fact that consumers were more likely than ever to “rescue” wanted mail from the spam folder, as demonstrated by the significant year over year increase in the “this is not spam” rate (1.77% in 2017 versus 1.04% in 2016).
  • Subscribers read email at a slightly lower rate than last year (21.5% in 2017, 22.2% in 2016), but mail that is ignored (or “deleted before reading”) was also slightly less common than a year ago (11.9% in 2017, 12.5% in 2016).

 

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Edison acquires part of Return Path

Today Matt Blumberg announced that Edison Software acquired Return Path’s Consumer Insight division, current customers and some Return Path staff.
Congrats to everyone involved.

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Thinking about deliverability

I was chatting with folks over on one of the email slack channels today. The discussion was about an ESP not wanting to implement a particular change as it would hurt deliverability. It led me down a path of thinking about how we think of deliverability and how that informs how we approach email.
The biggest problem I see is the black and white thinking.
There’s an underlying belief in the deliverability, receiving, and filtering communities  that the only way to affect sending behavior is to block (or threaten to block) mail.

This was true back in the ancient times (the late 90’s). We didn’t have sophisticated tools and fast CPUs. There weren’t a lot of ways to handle bad mail other than to block. Now the landscape is different. We have many more tools and the computing capacity to quickly sort large streams of data.
At most places these days, blocking is an escalation, not a warning shot. Many places rate limit and bulk folder questionable mail as a first strike against problem mail. Sometimes the mail is bad enough to result in a block. Other times, it’s not bad enough to block, so it disappears into the bulk folder.
There’s a corresponding belief in the sending community that if their behavior doesn’t result in blocking then they’re acting acceptably. This isn’t true either. There are a lot of things you can do (or not do) that don’t help delivery, but will actively harm delivery. Likewise, there are things you can do that don’t actively harm delivery, but will help. All of these things add up to reaching the inbox.

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State of Email Deliverability

I had other posts in the pipeline, but saw a link to the Litmus 2017 State of Email Deliverability Report and decided that deserved a mention here.
There’s all sorts of interesting data there, and well worth a download and read. I was, of course, interested in the “most problematic subscriber acquisition sources.” Senders having blocking issues or blacklist problems in the past 12 months use list rental, co-reg and purchased lists more often than senders that didn’t have problems.

Senders acquiring addresses through list rental are 104% more likely to be blacklisted than senders not using list rental. And they’re 47% more likely to be blocked.
These stats are the primary reason that most ESPs don’t allow list rentals, purchased or co-reg lists. They cause blocking and blacklisting. The ESP ends up having to deal with lots of problems and clean up the mess.
I’m unsurprised that lead generation by giving something away (a report, ebook, whatever) is related to problems. Most of these forms do little to no data checking and accept any and all fake data. There are fairly simple ways to enforce better data, but that does limit the spread of the information.
I am surprised to see signup through direct mail and catalog sales is so bad. Unless maybe people don’t know how to say no when asked for an email address over the phone. I know it seems awkward to say no when asked for an email address. Maybe some folks are giving fake addresses. I sometimes say I don’t have email, or just tell them no, they don’t need one.
The white paper itself is well worth a read. Go download it yourself (but don’t give them a fake email address!).

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