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No More Fishing for Competitive Insights: Check out the New Inbox Insight Features

Julia Peavy — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:51:00 +0000

Like many, I called my Dad on Father’s Day. He informed me that he was going fishing today for a few days. So, I’m proud to say that my Dad is the actual inspiration for this blog post. He, and the team at Return Path that has been working hard to get the new Inbox Insight features ready for prime time. As a consultant that works regularly with email marketers (and a former email marketer myself), I love actionable data. That’s why I’m so excited about the newest Inbox Insight features that Return Path is releasing today: more insights that marketers can easily leverage to make their emails stand out in the inbox.

Which Company is Winning: Company Trout or Company Salmon?

Now, back to fishing. To put one of the newest features to the test, I reviewed two outdoor gear marketers (we will call them “Company Trout” and “Company Salmon”). With Inbox Insight’s newest feature, Subscriber Overlap, we are able to see how many subscribers Company Trout and Company Salmon share. Not only can we see the percentage of the list that receives emails from both companies, but we can also see how these shared subscribers engage with individual campaigns from each company.

In our fishing example, we can see that 19% of Company’s Trout’s subscribers receive mail from Company Salmon. Moreover, Company Trout’s subscribers have a higher propensity to read Company Salmon’s email than Company Trout’s email.* Most interestingly, these shared subscribers received several Father’s Day campaigns from Company Salmon (that had high engagement rates) while Company Trout sent no emails to these shared subscribers.

Based on this data, Company Trout may have missed an opportunity to engage with these shared subscribers and win their Father’s Day dollars. Armed with this data, Company Trout can dive into the specific Father’s Day campaign subject lines and email creative to provide insights and guidance for campaigns centered around future holidays.

Which Company is Reaching their Daily Limit?

Just like many lakes have a limit to how many fish can be removed on a daily basis, there is also potentially a limit to the number of emails that you can send to your subscribers regularly. If you’re trying to monitor how many emails your competition sends over a week or month, it’s not easy if you have to manually sift through your inbox. With the new Trends feature in Inbox Insight, marketers can now quickly see how many campaigns are being sent by their competition while looking at engagement metrics simultaneously. See a spike in frequency? You can quickly see if this resulted in decreased read rates or increase ISP-marked spam rates – all in one place.

So, what can we learn about Companies Trout and Salmon from the Trends page? Looking at this data, we can see that Company Trout increased frequency the week of June 3rd and sent several campaigns to a large portion of their subscriber base. And while we can see there were emails sent by Company Trout focused on Father’s Day, we already know that none of these were sent to the subscribers Company Trout shares with Company Salmon.

We can also see that Company Trout sent emails to large portions of their file on Sundays with a read rate consistent with others day of the week. Company Salmon didn’t send any email on Sundays and might be missing an opportunity to engage with their subscribers across the entire week.

Looking to get started with email competitive intelligence? Keep these tips in mind.

Look beyond your competition’s marketing messages. How are they leveraging newsletters, transactional emails, and account-focused emails to advance their relationship with their subscriber base? Not sure what they are sending? Inbox Insight provides a window into the mailboxes of three million real subscribers.
Don’t simply copy your competition’s campaign. Evaluate what campaigns work for your competition and improve upon them.
Monitor your competition on a regular basis. Good email marketers are continually testing and the tactics your competition employ can change from week to week, even day to day.
Keep a pulse on your competition’s campaign frequency. High frequency is one of the leading causes for increased subscriber complaints (aka “This is junk”). Just because your competition starts sending email every day, this isn’t necessarily a great idea for your subscriber base.

Want to see if you are standing out in the inbox and take advantage of all the competitive insights Inbox Insight provides? Current Inbox Insight customers already have access to these features so login and take them for a spin or contact your Account Manager for more details. Not currently utilizing Inbox Insight to optimize your campaigns and increase your ROI? Download the Inbox Insight Data Sheet or Contact Return Path to learn more.

* For the shared subscriber base, Company Salmon’s emails have a read rate 28% greater than the read rate for emails from Company Trout.

Return Path Solution Analyzes Consumer Behavior when Marketers Compete Head-to-Head

Return Path — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:58:10 +0000

Inbox Insight Subscriber Overlap compares user engagement when competing brands’ email campaigns share the inbox

NEW YORK – June 18, 2013 – Return Path, the global leader in email intelligence, today announced the addition of a new feature to its Inbox Insight competitive intelligence solution, allowing marketers to understand more about how consumers engage with other brands’ email marketing campaigns. Called Subscriber Overlap, this feature isolates the behavior of shared subscribers – real people that receive email from competing marketers – to reveal whose campaigns they engage with and how they respond when given a choice between multiple brands’ messages.

With Subscriber Overlap, Inbox Insight users can determine what percentage of their subscriber bases they share with specific email senders, and compare subscriber behavior including reading messages to measure respective engagement. Findings are based on the aggregated, anonymized mailbox activity of a representative panel of 3 million email users.

“Marketers are already using Subscriber Overlap to find key tactical differences between competing campaigns, to see which drove better subscriber engagement. They’re optimizing email programs by incorporating competitors’ winning tactics, and it’s working for them,” said George Bilbrey, President of Return Path. “But we can deliver more value from email by applying this intelligence beyond the channel, helping marketers gain insight into product positioning, brand awareness, and market development. This tool can help organizations understand their customer experience in competitive environments.”

Six Father’s Day Winners, Picked by Subscriber Overlap

Using Inbox Insight’s Subscriber Overlap to study competitive brands’ subscriber engagement in the first week of June (during the run up to Father’s Day), Return Path was able to identify the marketers who were most successful at getting their messages read. (Read rate is the percentage of delivered messages that mailbox providers categorize as ‘read.’)

Walgreens (by a nose): Edging out its closest competitor, Walgreens posted the highest read rate in its category, although theirs was only 4% higher than the next-best contender.

The Home Depot (by a mile): In a highly competitive category, The Home Depot focused heavily on Father’s Day gifts and earned read rates that topped the second-place sender by 108%. Shared subscribers were more than twice as likely to read Home Depot messages than others’.

Walmart: When subscribers received messages from Walmart and a competing brand, they were more likely to read Walmart’s, elevating the company’s read rate 32% above its nearest competitor.

Nike: In head-to-head competition for subscribers’ attention, Nike’s read rate was 9% better than the next runner-up.

Golfsmith: When Golfsmith’s messages shared the inbox with direct competitors, its read rate beat theirs by 12%.

Hockey vs. Basketball: Fans generally receive email from either the National Hockey League or the National Basketball League – less than 4% of NHL subscribers also get mail from the NBA. But those that got both were more likely to read their hockey messages: When the leagues faced off, the NHL’s read rate was 11% higher than the NBA’s.

About Return Path

Return Path is the worldwide leader in email intelligence. We analyze more data about email than anyone else in the world and use that data to power products that ensure that only emails people want and expect reach the inbox. Our industry-leading email intelligence solutions utilize the world’s most comprehensive set of data to maximize the performance and accountability of email, build trust across the entire email ecosystem and protect users from spam and other abuse. We help businesses build better relationships with their customers and improve their email ROI; and we help ISPs and other mailbox providers enhance network performance and drive customer retention. Information about Return Path can be found at: www.returnpath.com.

Contact:
Tami Forman
Return Path
+1 646 367 3905
tami.forman@returnpath.com

Kristen Stippich
Weber Shandwick for Return Path
+1 212 445 8030
kstippich@webershandwick.com

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New eBook: Email Reputation Metrics Troubleshooter

Tom Sather — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:30:00 +0000

Your reputation as an email marketer and sender is the most important when it comes to getting delivered to the inbox and avoiding the spam folder. The better your email reputation, more of your emails will reach your subscribers.

According to our past deliverability benchmarks, marketing emails on average see 20 – 25% of emails land in spam or get blocked. Most marketers today still think that content is the deciding factor. However, based on our own findings, 83% of emails that didn’t reach the inbox were due to reputation, and only 17% were content related.

The good news is your email reputation is completely under your control. The challenge for most marketers and email senders is knowing what to measure and what to troubleshoot. Look no further. We created the Email Reputation Metrics Troubleshooter eBook to take mystery out of email reputation.

Our Email Reptuation Metrics Troubleshooter eBook helps you solve the following reputation issues:

Complaints
Spam Traps
Unknown Users
Infrastructure
Authentication
Blocks and Deferrals

You’ll find the common reasons for rising subscriber complaints, an increase in deferrals and blocks from ISPs, and more. So before you open a ticket to the ISP postmaster, download and read our eBook today!

BT and Yahoo! Reclaiming Old Accounts

Dale Langley — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:30:00 +0000

An email was issued to BT Broadband customers in late April that prompted some speculation over its authenticity. It read as follows (abridged version):

Hello,

We're changing the terms and conditions for accessing the email that comes with your BT Broadband - BT Yahoo! Mail.

From 17 June this year, you'll need to log in to your email account at least once every 150 days. If you don't, we'll presume you don't use your email account anymore and we'll close it. We'll delete everything that goes with it - including your emails, contacts, calendar and notes.

Thanks for choosing BT.

Warren Buckley
Managing Director, Customer Service

Well, this email is genuine and the changes are now imminent. There are probably hundreds of thousands of these accounts that are lying dormant, taking up server space and like that corner of the fridge that you dare not enter, have the potential to harbour all sorts of nasty creatures. So it makes sense that they are going to be cleaned out more regularly.

So what does this mean to you as a marketer?

Firstly, do you have btinternet.com or btopenworld.com addresses in your subscriber list? If you’re a marketer based in the UK then you almost certainly do.

Secondly, you’ll then need to think about the last time they interacted with you and think about how you’re going to handle those BT subscribers who haven’t interacted with you for the last 5 months. Perhaps you’ll want to try to reach them before the 17th June and get them to confirm that they still want to receive your emails. Of course, this type of activity should already be part of any good subscriber lifecycle / win-back program but you may need to tweak your rules to take BT’s new dormancy definition into account.

If you know you have these subscribers in your database who haven’t engaged with your mailings and you decide not to deal with them before 17th June then expect an uplift in bounces from BT domains as these addresses are retired. Make sure that your bounce processing rules are working as you expect and that you remove these addresses immediately from your list as they bounce.

These tips can also now be applied to Yahoo! addresses because they’ve also recently announced that they’ll be retiring old addresses and releasing them back into the wild. This time however, Yahoo! have a period of 12 months inactivity before retiring an address. This period is beyond what we’d normally recommend for removing inactive subscribers but if you’re not removing inactives or your sales cycle is relatively long then you should consider the impact this may have on your program.

And finally, for the big question... “Why should I care?” As my colleague Jamie described here, old addresses can be used as spam traps which mailbox providers use to identify senders with poor practices. They’ll then penalise you through increased filtering or reduced inbox placement so do the right thing, monitor your inactivity and put a plan in place to retire old data gracefully.

Facts to Impress Your Friends and Family for National Email Week

Alex Weltman — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:45:30 +0000

It’s finally here, and almost over! While unfortunately unknown to many, National Email Week occurs during the second week of June, and is my second-favorite week of the year (after Shark Week, of course!) In honor of this holiday, I’d like to share some of the most interesting facts about email, and expose some of the history of the technology on which this week is based.

Mass Communication: We send a LOT of emails, racking up an average of 250 – 300 BILLION emails a day worldwide. That’s about half the number of text messages sent daily (600 billion), almost the number of Facebook Chat messages sent per day (400 billion), and almost 1000 times the number of tweets tweeted daily (400 million).
The Money’s in the Message: Retailers send subscribers an average of 16 emails per month during “busy” months. Only 20% of these emails are actually opened, but an overwhelming percent of people (77%) prefer marketing messages via email, as opposed to other mediums.
Welcome to Spamalot: The word “spam” originates from an old Monty Python sketch, but today there’s nothing funny about it. A whopping 90% (read: ALMOST ALL) emails are spam. This may seem like it merely amounts to a minor annoyance, but spam can actually cost businesses as much as $20 million annually.

The first spam email was sent on May 3rd, 1978. The DECSYSTEM-2020 and TOPS-20 new computer and operating system, had just been released. To advertise the new technology, a DEC marketer, sent out a message about the computer to 600 ARPANET (a precursor to the Internet) users. The message was not well received, and another commercial mass email was not sent for several years.

The Wrath of Khan: Mass amounts of spam are sent by botnets, or networks of computers where the owner of the computer is unaware that the computer is forwarding spam. The first botnet was created by spammer Khan C. Smith, who was exposed in August, 2001, when Earthlink, the third largest Internet service provider at the time, filed a lawsuit against him.

“Smith used dummy Web sites and domain names to send spam promising free credit reports or free Internet service, but in order to get the free goods, users would be asked to submit a credit card number, password or other personal information to secure their new account.”

It turned out that Smith was responsible for 25% of the spam sent at the time, and Earthlink won $25 million from the lawsuit.

According to the Atlanta Business ChronicleOn December 16th, 2003, president George W. Bush signed into law the CAN-SPAM Act, which created restrictions on content that can be included in unsolicited marketing emails. However, it is sometimes referred to as the “YOU-CAN-SPAM” Act because of its inability to prevent spam.

Hope you had a great end to National Email Week, and as they say at Return Path, National Email Week is every day.

Yahoo Releasing Inactive User IDs

Christine Borgia — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:04:00 +0000

Yahoo's Announcement

Yahoo announced yesterday that they will be releasing user IDs that haven’t been accessed in over 12 months and making those user IDs available for someone else to register. Additionally, Yahoo announced a policy that user IDs will be released after 12 months of inactivity moving forward. So Yahoo users who don't log into their accounts in 12 months will lose their user ID.

So, how are we making these Yahoo! IDs available? We’re freeing up IDs, that have been inactive for at least 12 months, by resetting them and giving them a fresh start. In mid July, anyone can have a shot at scoring the Yahoo! ID they want. In mid August, users who staked a claim on certain IDs can come to Yahoo! to discover which one they got.

Users have until July 15th to sign into their accounts and retain their user IDs.

Impact to Email Senders

What does this mean to email senders? The most important thing to consider here is that if you are mailing someone who no longer uses their Yahoo account, come August your message may no longer be reaching the intended recipient. We're reaching out to Yahoo to get more specifics about how they will be implementing this, particularly whether mail to these user IDs will bounce at any point. Once we have more detail, we will post specific recommendations to the blog.

18 Tips for Improving Subscriber Quality

John Pollard — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Many marketers I work with have challenges with obtaining and maintaining a high quality subscriber list file. High quality in most cases means subscribers that open your email, read it and take the actions you are asking them to take such as visiting your website, buying a product or downloading a report. When I ask marketers about their approach to subscriber quality, many use some of the basic tactics such as using an 'opt-in' process, sending to a few subscriber segments for better targeting and signing up for feedback loops to suppress complainers. While it is good to use some of the basic tactics, there are many more opportunities to improve subscriber quality that many marketers aren't taking advantage of right now.

When evaluating how marketers obtain and maintain a high quality subscriber list file, there are generally three phases: Subscriber Acquisition, Subscriber Data Management and Subscriber Hygiene. Each phase presents an opportunity to improve the quality of your subscribers.

Subscriber Acquisition: The method and process of acquiring subscribers

Use a consistent sign up process across all acquisition points of capture. A consistent process helps you capture consistent data which can be used to improve segmentation and targeting.
Use organic list growth methods such as signing up at your website, social networks and point of sale.
Use an 'opt-in' or 'confirmed opt-in' permission method.
Offer a preference center and allow subscribers to choose different relevancy and frequency options.
Send a welcome message and provide an incentive such as a discount or VIP access to encourage new subscribers to take action immediately.
Identify and prevent bad addresses from entering your subscriber list file by using a service from companies such as LeadSpend, Bright Verify or FreshAddress.

For more details on acquiring high quality subscribers, download our eBook ’50 Ways to Grow Your Email List’.

Subscriber Data Management: You acquired a subscriber, now what?

Use segmentation to your advantage and send more targeted, relevant messages. The preference center, purchase history, web analytics and other demographics are great ways to improve segmentation.
Track engagement metrics for each segment such as read rate, clicks, conversions and delete without opening.
Track and monitor the performance of all email address sources to help with troubleshooting. If you have a source that is introducing a large number of unknown users or unengaged subscribers in to your list file, you may want to consider another source.
Monitor subscribers that reply to your messages. Subscribers that reply to your messages are real people and want to communicate with you. Encourage this behavior.
Monitor out of office messages. Monitoring an out of office message let's you know that the subscriber is a real person and not a spam trap.

Subscriber Hygiene: Keeping your subscriber list file clean

Identify bad addresses already in your subscriber list file by using a service from companies such as LeadSpend, Bright Verify or FreshAddress. Over time, subscribers that deactivate or abandon their account may become unknown users and spam traps.
Send a win-back campaign and remove inactive and unengaged subscribers.
Ensure your bounce process is working properly. Remove unknown users after one bounce.
Allow subscribers the ability to change their email address and encourage this behavior in your email footer.
Sign up for all available feedback loops and suppress complainers.
Have a global suppression list, especially if you send from multiple brands and/or divisions.
Perform regular database checks for role accounts (e.g. sales@, service@), disposable email addresses (e.g. johndoe+label@domain.com) and malformed domains (e.g. @yhaoo.com, @gmaiol.com).

Subscriber quality is at the heart of any good email program. You can implement all of the best email marketing practices around; but if you are sending to a subscriber list file full of unknown users, spam traps and inactive, uninterested or unengaged subscribers then you greatly decrease the chance of your message reaching the recipient and converting them in to a customer.

How a Conference Exhibition Hall is Like an Email Inbox

Julia Peavy — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:28:00 +0000

Having just returned from the Internet Retailer Conference with over 600 vendors, you realize what a competitive place the event floor is. Not only are vendors competing with other vendors that provide the same service or product as they do, they are competing with every other vendor in the exhibition hall. I couldn’t help but see the similarities with email. The email inbox is a competitive place. Marketers’ potentially compete head-to-head with their direct competitors on a regular basis, but they are also competing with every other sender in the inbox.

Which vendor booths grab your attention (subject line)?
There is a lot to see on the exhibition floor at a large convention. The booth and those working it only have a few seconds to engage with attendees as they quickly pass by. The same goes for email. If you don’t have an engaging subject line that is relevant to your audience, you lose your opportunity to engage. Don’t blow this opportunity. Test your subject lines. Monitor your competitions’ subject lines and those of other successful marketers. Make sure you can quickly grab the attention of your subscribers who are reading your email on the go and dealing with busier and busier inboxes. Just like the exhibition floor, you are competing against all the emails in your inbox, not just your direct competitions’ emails.

Which vendor has the best messaging and the most knowledgeable staff (creative)?
Let’s face it. If you have an ugly booth or people working the booth who don’t know their stuff, attendees aren’t sticking around. Even worse, they might run to your competition’s booth. The same goes for email. If your email doesn’t quickly convey its value in a visually appealing way, your subscribers won’t click and potentially look at your competition for their next purchase. Make sure to test all your emails and view your email in variety of email clients to ensure the email renders well for all your subscribers. In addition, know what your competition is sending and how it is performing.

Which vendor has the best giveaway (offer)?
I will be the first to admit that my suitcase contained several items that I will give to my children as “gifts” (and a personal favorite for me - a t-shirt that says “keep calm and email on”). Because of these items, I chatted with several vendors. Without an enticing giveaway, I wouldn’t have chatted with them. While not all emails must have an offer, those that do need to have one that is valuable, timely, and relevant. What generally works with your subscribers? Which offers work for your competition? How do your subscribers engage with offers from your competition? Hint: You can find out with the new subscriber overlap beta feature in Inbox Insight.

Which attendees are worth talking with (targeting)?
With such a huge conference and hundreds of vendors, not every conference attendee is going to be the right target for your product or service. And, for those that are, your competition is potentially using different measures to engage with those attendees. Do you know the various ways your competition is engaging with their various booth attendees? Does it appear to be working (how busy is their booth)? The same goes for your email file. While you might have thousands on your list, your list is not homogeneous and how you (and your competition) engage with them should vary. Some subscribers may want several emails a week while others only want a couple emails a month. Some may be recent purchasers and others have never bought a thing (yet). As an email marketer (just like a vendor on the exhibition floor), you need to know your audience and how to get engage with that individual. Monitor your competition and learn how they are using email to engage with their audience effectively. When do they send? How many emails do they send? How are they segmenting their file? And how do these tactics work for them?

Interested in tracking your inbox competition? Check out some tips here or contact your Account Manager for more details on Inbox Insight and our new beta features. Not currently utilizing Inbox Insight to optimize your campaigns and increase your ROI? Contact Return Path to learn more.

Sign-up for a customized coaching clinic this week at Integrated Marketing Week

Stephanie Colleton — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:42:00 +0000

Integrated Marketing Week is being held this week in New York. The conference addresses the convergence of social media, big data, online advertising, analytics, mobile, ecommerce, and the flood of channels and devices in the marketplace today. If you are attending the conference, please be sure to stop by the Return Path booth (#400) to say hello.

Return Path will be presenting two whitepapers at the conference:

On Tuesday at 11:50, Tami Forman will be presenting the whitepaper Email is Getting Smarter, Are You? Why Email Intelligence is Crucial to Marketing Success Now
On Wednesday at 3:25, Ken Takahashi will be presenting Attack of the Brand Destroyers: How Phishers, Fraudsters and Criminals are Slashing Your Revenue

Finally, we are hosting free coaching clinics on two topics: Email Deliverability and Email Competitive Intelligence. The clinics run all day and you’ll be meeting with me, Stephanie Colleton, or Bonnie Malone. You can sign-up online or at the show.

It should be a great show. Hope to see you there.

Gmail's New Interface Q&A

Christine Borgia — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:18:00 +0000

Gmail announced last week that they are rolling out a new Gmail inbox UI aimed at helping users organize their emails, saying that marketing and social emails "can compete for our attention and make it harder to focus on the things we need to get done." Emails categorized (by Gmail) as Promotions, Social, and Updates will be separated out of the primary view into different tabs.

Here are some questions I've seen so far and my answers, at least to the best of my knowledge. We'll learn more as this rolls out.

1. Adoption rates on new features are usually low, so is this a non-issue?

The new interface is available to all users by clicking the Settings gear and selecting "Configure Inbox".

It's not entirely clear at this point whether Gmail will force switch users to the new interface or require users to manually make the switch.

2. How good is the classification?

I've heard mixed reports on this one. In my own experience, and for most people I have talked to, the classification is remarkably accurate. I did find one message in Promotions that I felt belonged in Updates, and when I dragged it from one tab to the other, I had the option of having all future mail from that sender classified as Updates. One thing is for sure, though -- as those users train the system, Gmail will learn.

3. How will this impact engagement metrics like read rate?

Obviously, any time you remove messages from the primary view of the user (whether it's to the spam folder or another folder), it will have an impact on engagement. There are two primary types of engagement to consider here. The first is engagement as the sender sees it -- opens, clicks, conversions, etc. – the type of metrics that demonstrate the success of your campaigns. It's likely that opens and clicks will decrease as the mail is less visible to users. However, I have seen some argue that because users will go to their Promotions tab only when they are looking to shop, interested in browsing, etc., the people who see your emails are more likely to convert.

The other kind of engagement is what the ISPs look at to determine whether to put mail in the inbox or spam folder. This type of engagement won't be impacted by the UI change, because all senders will be on the same playing field. So while overall reads might decline, it won't have a negative impact on how the ISP views your mail because all senders' reads will similarly decline. I wouldn't expect this new interface to impact inbox/spam delivery.

4. Could this possibly be a good thing for marketers?

There is a hidden benefit to this type of user interface, and that's the fact that users don't get fatigued by their marketing emails and are less inclined to complain or unsubscribe. The emails are in a separate tab/view, so users can look there when they want something specific, feel like browsing, etc. But the messages won't be cluttering up their inbox, hiding important emails. Losing opens is one thing, losing addresses is another. Perhaps with this type of interface, marketers will see less churn and therefore their overall metrics won't suffer as much as you might think.

5. Is there any way to get my emails to show in the primary view?

There isn't really a way to bypass this feature if you send marketing mail, promotions, etc. The primary view is for the user's personal mail, one-to-one communications, etc. I've talked to people in the last week who are experimenting to see what impact certain changes might have on where they are delivered. I won't share those here because (1) it's an attempt to game the system and (2) such changes will ultimately not benefit the sender. Like I said, if marketing mail is now being classified as Promotions, I anticipate that unsubscribes and complaints will drop significantly. If some email marketers manage to bypass the classification and go to the Primary view, guess what will happen? Their complaints and unsubscribes will be higher than other email marketers and the next thing you know, instead of the Promotions tab, it's the Spam folder.

So that's the quick and dirty on the new Gmail interface. We'll keep you posted as we learn more. In the meantime, what are your thoughts about the new interface? Have you tried the new feature out? What do you think?

Return Path Named to Online Trust Honor Roll for Fourth Year

Ken Takahashi — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 19:25:00 +0000

Earning and maintaining the world’s trust in electronic communication speaks to the core of Return Path’s mission, so we are deeply proud to make the Online Trust Alliance’s 2013 Online Trust Honor Roll. It’s especially gratifying to receive this distinction for the fourth consecutive year – Return Path is in elite company as one of few organizations to be named to the Honor Roll in every year the OTA has run this program.

Our commitment to making the email ecosystem safer and smarter has always driven Return Path to be an industry leader. As a founding member of the OTA we’ve been a vocal advocate for authentication; as a founding member of DMARC we’ve helped forge a new security standard; and as an email intelligence leader we’re developing the next generation of phishing detection. But none of these efforts could succeed without collaborative support from our clients and industry partners, many of whom were recognized today as Online Trust Honor Roll members.

Please take a look at the full 2013 Honor Roll report. It documents the progress of entire industries working together to instill trust in a spectrum of communication channels. Return Path is honored to play a pivotal role in this effort.

Mother’s Day Analysis Across 3 Popular Gift Brands: Tactics for Driving Email Engagement

Margaret Farmakis — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:30:00 +0000

This year, consumers were expected to spend $20.7 billion dollars for Mother’s Day with an average spend of $168.94 per person, at a projected increase of 11% over 2012, as reported by the National Retail Federation. While the final numbers for 2013 are still being tallied, no one can deny that retailers rely heavily on Mother’s Day to hit their annual numbers and drive earnings. According to Forbes, it’s the second biggest consumer-spending holiday in the US.

Online gift sites are particularly well positioned to reap the rewards of the nation’s collective generosity toward its mothers, and email marketing can and should play a central role in any gift brand’s strategy. So while Mother’s Day has come and gone, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what tactics worked well for three popular online gift sites: Uncommon Goods, Red Envelope, and their sister brand, Personal Creations.

I used Return Path’s Inbox Insight product and reviewed 30 days’ worth of email marketing campaign data for each brand from April 14th – March 11th and focused on engagement metrics, specifically the Read Rate (messages that were flagged as “marked as read” by the subscriber’s email client).

Uncommon Goods email campaigns had the best overall average read rates at 16%, as compared to Red Envelope at 14% and Personal Creations at 13%, despite the fact that they sent the fewest campaigns over the 30-day period (11 campaigns), while Red Envelope sent the most (26 campaigns). Uncommon Goods campaigns also performed higher than other retailers in the Shopping category across the 30 days leading up to Mother’s Day, where read rates averaged 14%. Interestingly, Uncommon Goods was also the only brand of the three not to include any percentage discounts or references to shipping/delivery times in their subject lines.

While Uncommon Goods performed best overall, both Red Envelope and Personal Creations had campaigns that drove higher than average read rates. With Father’s Day fast approaching, and numerous holidays coming up in the second half of the year, what can email marketers learn from some of the tactics these gift brands used to drive engagement with their campaigns? Here are a few ideas:

Subject lines with “Mother” and “Mother’s Day” outperformed subject lines with “Mom” when compared with the average read rates across all Mother’s Day campaigns for each of the three brands. Consider testing “Father” versus “Dad” for your Father’s Day campaigns to learn what works best.
Red Envelope sent three campaigns using special characters (hearts), and each campaign outperformed the overall average read rate of their Mother’s Day campaigns by 9%. While special characters for every subject line doesn’t make sense, getting subscribers familiar with seeing them in their inboxes can pay off – each subsequent campaign using special characters generated a higher read rate than the previous one.
Consider using numbers in subject lines, beyond featuring percentage discounts. All three brands used numbers in a slightly different way, including: “1 Day Left for Mother’s Day Delivery,” “Redbook’s Top 10 Gifts for Mom,” and “Gifts for #1 Moms.” These campaigns had higher average read rates than the overall average for each brand’s Mother’s Day campaigns. For Red Envelope, campaigns with numbers in the subject line actually outperformed campaigns using percentage discounts by 16%.
While Personal Creations specializes in customization, that’s only one category of gift offered by Uncommon Goods and Red Envelope, however campaigns that featured some element of personalization or customization generated higher than average read rates for these brands. Some of the campaigns included references to “one of a kind” gifts or birthstones in the subject lines while others focused on an area of interest, like fashion and gardening, or a life stage, such as women who are new moms or grandmothers.
Other campaigns that drove high read rates were those that referenced brand activity in another marketing channel, like Red Envelope’s campaign promoting their new Mother’s Day catalog, which drove a read rate of 16%, and a campaign referencing a Pinterest hash tag (“#mamasays”). The Pinterest campaign included creative with a call-to-action to view their Pinterest board, as well as prominent Twitter and Facebook links. The catalog campaign included links to view the online version in case the hard copy had been “lost in the mail.”
Uncommon Goods and Red Envelope sent the most campaigns during the third week of the 30-day period (a week before Mother’s Day); however the campaigns that drove the highest average read rates for these two brands were sent during the second week. Personal Creations sent the most campaigns during the third week and also drove the highest average read rates during that week, likely because 4 of the 5 campaigns sent that week focused on delivery and shipping promotions, which would have been timely and relevant for subscribers leaving their gift-buying to the last minute.

Be sure to test when implementing new tactics to see what resonates the most with your active and inactive segments, especially during important holidays where your campaigns are expected to drive even higher revenue and ROI.

If you’re in the process of implementing some of these tactics, let us know by adding a comment below. Want to learn more about how you can improve the performance of your email program?

This post originally appeared in ClickZ.

Help! I'm blocked at Hotmail! What do I do now?

Tonya Mitchell — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000

If you’ve ever found yourself blocked at Outlook.com, the free mail service formerly known as Hotmail, you know that finding out where to start and what to do is confusing. I’ve created the following checklist and tips that any marketer or person sending email can follow to help them get delivered to the inbox.

Check your bounce logs. If none of the mail you are sending is being accepted by Outlook.com/Hotmail/Live.com, check your bounce logs. The Microsoft bounces will include the SMTP error reason code for the block. For a full list of SMTP error codes, go to the end of the page here.

Adhere to the following technical infrastructure guidelines:

Set up your DNS. The sending IP address of your mail server should have a valid reverse DNS record using a fully qualified domain name. This will ensure your domain won’t be blocked for appearing to use a dynamic IP address.
Authenticate your email. Microsoft validates incoming domains using SPF and is currently checking DKIM as well. In some cases, publishing an SPF record has moved email from the junk folder to the inbox, indicating that Microsoft places some weight on authentication in their reputation scoring model.
Manage connection settings. Do not open more than 500 simultaneous connections to Outlook.com mail servers. Failure to do so will likely result in your mail being deferred and you’ll need to adjust your settings if you expect to get through.

Manage your reputation. Sending history, subscriber complaints and list quality are important measures that Microsoft and most mailbox providers look at to decide whether or not the email should be blocked or sent to the junk folder.

Reduce complaints. Filtering at Microsoft is often the result of excessive complaints from your subscribers. Ensure you are signed up on the Microsoft Junk Mail Reporting (JMR) program (commonly called a feedback loop) and suppress all complainers from your email list immediately. But don’t just remove the complaints from your list; use that feedback loop data to help you identify why they complained in the first place. Keep track of campaigns that experience a high rate of complaints to help troubleshoot potential problems. Consider such things as content relevance, data source of subscribers and the age and activity of the data generating complaints and make the appropriate adjustments to your program.
Sign up for Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services (SNDS). Microsoft provides valuable data to help you monitor your IP activity via SNDS. This free service will help identify campaigns resulting in excessive complaints and spam trap hits. Use this information to help identify the root cause of issues and take the appropriate action to correct the problem.
Look out for Brightmail filtering. Microsoft uses the Brightmail anti-spam content filter in their filtering decisions. The Brightmail technology learns what email is spam from all mail received in their spam trap network. If a high volume of your mail is considered suspicious, your IP address could be blocked or bulked. You can check your Brightmail IP reputation and request block removal here.
Remove invalid addresses. Manage your list to ensure the removal of invalid accounts (unknown users) and old/inactive subscribers. Don’t be tempted to “pad” your list with these addresses hoping it will make your overall metrics look better. Microsoft and other Mailbox Providers can tell if you do and will often filter your mail into the bulk folder as a result.
Send from IPs with a positive reputation. Microsoft wants to see you deploying your mail from IPs with an established sender reputation. A new IP with no reputation does not mean it has a good reputation. As a result, mail sent from new IPs is usually filtered into the bulk folder until a positive reputation is observed. Refer to the following blog for details on how you can build the reputation on a new IP.
Verify your IP reputation. Ensure you regularly check your IP reputation and the various factors causing any decline via senderscore.org. Return Path research has shown that the higher your Sender Score, the better your chances of reaching the inbox. The following illustrates the percentage of mail that landed in the inbox at the top Mailbox Providers in relation to their Sender Score:

Keep your subscribers engaged with your email. Subscriber engagement impacts whether your email will reach the Microsoft inbox or junk folder. Microsoft has stated they look at the following areas of engagement to decide whether or not to send email to the inbox or spam:

Messages read, then deleted
Messages deleted without being read
Messages replied to
Frequency of receiving and reading a message from a source

While you may not have insight into these metrics, you should be tracking opens, clicks, conversions, web activity, etc. on your end. If your subscribers don’t register any activity based on your internal metrics, chances are they aren’t performing for Microsoft either.

Help keep subscribers engaged by setting the proper expectations up front regarding the type and frequency of email the subscriber will receive. Deliver on what you promised with email that is relevant to them and they can easily recognize is coming from you.

Get Certified. Wow, that’s a lot to keep track of! The good news is Microsoft uses the Return Path Certified whitelist. By having a third party like Return Path accredit your sending practices, Microsoft can deliver your email to the inbox, and with images enabled. Acceptance into that program will positively impact delivery.

Do you have other tips for reaching the Hotmail inbox? Please feel free to share!

3 Things I Learned at the Responsys Interact

Cherie Ansari — Fri, 31 May 2013 16:16:13 +0000

I had the privilege of attending the Responsys Interact last week. This was the first time I was able to participate and I had a great experience. Responsys really knows how to throw a conference. First of all, it was located at the beautiful Marriot Marquis in the heart of San Francisco. Secondly, Responsys’ branding was over the top in all the right ways. Everywhere you looked, you saw Responsys’ logo. It was on the tote bags, iPad covers, paper coffee cups, monitors, walls, and even on the tabletops of the power charging stations. The sessions were filled with great motivational and subject matter expert speakers, while the evenings ended with nightly entertainment.

My main objective at the conference was to speak at the “Email is getting smarter, are you? Why email intelligence is crucial to marketing success now” presentation. Here are the 3 things I learned from the audience:

Not enough senders were mobile ready – Only about a fourth of the audience members were mobile ready. Mobile readiness is a great area of opportunity, especially for those in the retail industry. A recent Return Path study showed that 40% of retail subscribers viewed their email through mobile devices. Furthermore, purchases made from mobile devices had the highest Average Order Value at $97.39, compared to tablets at $96.11 and desktops/laptops at $91.86.
Competitive Intelligence is hot – I received a lot of feedback after my presentation from people that loved Return Path’s Inbox Insight data, which allows you to see how your email program’s performance compares to the performance of your competitors (i.e. read rate, deleted without opens, frequency, etc.). As an example, Royal Caribbean was able to increase their sending frequency by 65%, while maintaining high levels of engagement and doubling their conversion rates by using our tools and having us look at what their competition was doing.
No one knew about DMARC – To my surprise, not one audience member had a DMARC record published. Senders should be monitoring the rate of suspicious email messages being sent from their domain and actively stopping phishing attacks. Can phished emails impact your deliverability? Yes! We have seen our clients’ sending domains get blacklisted because the phished emails included the legitimate URLs, as well as fraudulent ones. Since they were tied together, the blacklist company blacklisted both domains. Don’t let this happen to you! Be proactive. Start with a simple DMARC record. See how our Anti-Phishing solutions can help.

A big thanks to those of you who attended my session and visited the Return Path booth. I also wanted to thank Responsys for the gift given to all the presenters. We received a personalized thank you card and a wireless speaker, which of course, had Responsys’ logo printed on it.

A Spammer's Little Black Book

Dana Huten — Wed, 29 May 2013 13:30:00 +0000

In my last post, Spam – A Lucrative Parallel Economy in Europe, I wrote about the economics of spam according to a study by Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz of Germany. Today I want to share more details from that study as well as a surprising discovery. When you think of spammer's databases of addresses, you may assume they're predominately populated with Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, or large, European freemail addresses. Surpisingly, it's not that way at all.

In 2010, the closely guarded spam affiliate program Spamit was closed down. The administrators blamed their demise on public scrutiny. Before Spamit’s closure, Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz, along with his team, were able to obtain a copy of Spamit’s sister site, Spamdox.biz’s forum. The team analyzed Spamdot.biz’s webforum to better understand how spammers network, communicate, and generate profit. Spamdot.biz’s member base of almost 2000 users were almost entirely Russian speaking (91.3%). To join the community, a prospective member must be thoroughly vetted by a process that required at least three referrals from existing members and those referring members were required to either meet a minimum post requirement or be directly referred by so called “Trusted Members." According to their report, the forum was divided into two main categories: Spam Community and Vendor Services.

Considering that a Cutwail client's greatest problem turned out to be invalid addresses (53.3% of Cutwail’s message failure was due to bad addresses) and not spam filters, it’s no surprise that the hottest items for sell were list of email addresses. The cost of the list depended on the validity of the addresses and the type of address. Free-mail addresses like Yahoo!, Hotmail or Gmail were considerably less lucrative. They sold at a rate one-half of other addresses which is a good indicator of the impact of Microsoft's, Yahoo!'s, and Google's anti-spam technologies. The cost for one million addresses could be between $25-$50.

The most successful of Cutwail’s clients had custom lists. From the report:

“By comparing the email addresses, file names and the vendor who provided the list, we were able to assess their relative effectiveness. More specifically, we found that the most successful clients had custom lists, that contained unique addresses that were not shared by any other clients, and most importantly, the addresses were valid. On the other hand, Client-1 appeared to be using default lists (possibly included for free), on every server. Thus, these lists were lower in quality, and therefore contributed to less effective spam campaigns.”

The general consensus has previously considered large freemail providers as a spammer’s paradise, at least when it comes to harvesting spammable addresses. But Dr. Holz’s analysis of Cutwail’s botnet showed the opposite. When shopping for lists, spammers avoid the large freemail providers and pay good money for high quality list. For spammers, “high quality” means valid addresses and not Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, or large, European freemail providers. Their spam filters are so good, spammers pay more to avoid them.

List quality and hygiene is one email theme that never gets old. This is probably because list quality remains an issue for legitimate mailers. In April, the Email Marketing Industry Census published by Econsultancy stated that “the quality [or lack of] of email lists databases remains a major barrier to effective marketing campaigns.” The survey reported that only “49% of mailers performed regular list cleansing practices.”

Spammers may be highly suspect when it comes to ethics, but they’re not stupid. As Holz’s investigation of the Spamdot.biz community shows, they know the power of a good list and they have experience and a community on their side to help them succeed.