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 SpamUseful 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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Busiest email time of the year

Everyone ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns? I know many retailers are already mailing, my inbox is exploding with offers. For me, this is often a quiet time of the year. As a strategist, most of my worked happened months ago. Now, it’s time for execution.
I wish everyone a successful week of mailing.
May your deliverability be high.
May your subject lines be correct.
May your personalization work.
May your strategy rock.

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October 2017: The Month in Email

October was a busy month. In addition to on boarding multiple new clients, we got new desks, I went to Toronto to see M3AAWG colleagues for a few days, and had oral surgery. Happily, we’re finally getting closer to having the full office setup. 

What is an office without a Grover Cat? (he was so pleased he figured out how to get onto it at standing height).

All of this means that blogging was pretty light this month.
One of the most interesting bits of news this month is that the US National Cybersecurity Assessments & Technical Services Team issued a mandate on web and email security, which Steve reviewed here.
In best practices, I made a brief mention about the importance of using subdomains rather than entirely new domain names in links and emails and even DKIM keys.
We’ve talked about engagement-based filters before, but it’s interesting to note how they’re being used in business environments as well as consumer environments.
We also put together a survey looking at how people use Google Postmaster Tools. The survey is now closed, and I’ll be doing a full analysis over the next couple of weeks, as well as talking about next steps. I did a quick preview of some of the highlights earlier this week.
Finally, a lot of industry news this month: Most notably, Mailchimp has changed its default signup process from double opt-in to single opt-in. This caused quite a bit of sturm und drang from all ends of the industry. And, in fact, a few days later they announced the default double-opt-in would stay in place for .eu senders. I didn’t get a chance to blog about that as it happened. In other news, the Road Runner FBL is permanently shuttered, and Edison Software has acquired Return Path’s Consumer Insight division. Also worth noting: Microsoft is rolling out new mail servers, and you’ll likely see some new — and potentially confusing — error codes.
My October themed photo is behind a cut, for those of you who have problems with spiders.

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August 2017: The month in email

Hello! Hope all are keeping safe through Harvey, Irma, Katia and the aftermath. I know many people that have been affected and are currently out of their homes. I am proud to see so many of my fellow deliverability folks are helping our displaced colleagues with resources, places to stay and money to replace damaged property.
Here’s a mid-month late wrapup of our August blog posts. Our favorite part of August? The total eclipse, which was absolutely amazing. Let me show you some pictures.





Ok, back to email.
We’re proud of the enormous milestone we marked this month: ten years of near-daily posts to our Word to the Wise blog. Thanks for all of your attention and feedback over the past decade!
In other industry news, I pointed to some interesting findings from the Litmus report on the State of Email Deliverability, which is always a terrific resource.
I also wrote about the evolution of filters at web-based email providers, and noted that Gmail’s different approach may well be because it entered the market later than other providers.
In spam, spoofing, and other abuse-related news, I posted about how easy it is for someone to spoof a sender’s identity, even without any technical hacks. This recent incident with several members of the US presidential administration should remind us all to be more careful with making sure we pay attention to where messages come from. How else can you tell that someone might not be wholly legitimate and above-board? I talked about some of what I look at when I get a call from a prospective customer as well as some of the delightful conversations I’ve had with spammers over the years.
In the security arena, Steve noted the ongoing shift to TLS and Google’s announcement that they will label text and email form fields on pages without TLS as “NOT SECURE”. What is TLS, you ask? Steve answers all your questions in a comprehensive post about Transport Layer Security and Certificate Authority Authorization records.
Also worth reading, and not just for the picture of Paddington Bear: Steve’s extremely detailed post about local-part semantics, the chunk of information before the at sign in an email address. How do you choose your email addresses (assuming they are not assigned to you at work or school…)? An email address is an identity, both culturally and for security purposes.
In subscription best practices — or the lack thereof — Steve talked about what happens when someone doesn’t quite complete a user registration. Should you send them a reminder to finish their registration? Of course! Should you keep sending those reminders for 16 months after they’ve stopped engaging with you? THE SURPRISING ANSWER! (Ok, you know us. It wasn’t that surprising.)

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