Emailhead

Most email-sending IPs Have Bad Reputation

The reputations of 97 out of 100 email-sending IP addresses are bad enough that email providers would likely block their messages, according to an email study.

A mere 0.9 percent of IP addresses score high enough to ensure that emails they send would likely be delivered, according to a study by email deliverability services firm Return Path, Directmag.com reports (via MarketingVox). Luckily, most commercial marketers' IP addresses are within that 0.9 percent. However, their "Sender Score," as monitored by Return Path, tends to be closer to the borderline 70 than the highest-level 100.

Return Path uses six criteria (e.g., complaint rates, email volume sent, unknown-user rates) to assign each address a 1-100 score. Senders with scores above 70 would likely have their email delivered; those below 30 likely wouldn't. The highest-scoring IP addresses tend to be corporate accounts that don't send much email and don't spam.

"Most marketers are between 60 and 80," George Bilbrey, general manager of Return Path's delivery assurance solutions unit, is quoted as saying. "Most marketers are in the gray area. The question is: How gray are you and how can you get yourself to a lighter shade of gray?" The answer lies more in reputation and less in email content, he says.

Email Best Practices Exist, not Followed

According to a recent study completed by Multichannel Merchant and Direct magazines, 61 percent of business-to-business marketers have formal permission practices for collecting email addresses, while 93 percent of consumer marketers say they have formal practices in place, eMarketer reports (via MediaBuyerPlanner).

Sixty percent of the consumer marketers surveyed reported using a single opt-in method of gathering email addresses, while 7 percent used a double opt-in method - whereby registrants send a confirmation reply to remain on the list. Of the business marketers surveyed, 26 percent used single opt-in methods, and just three percent used the double opt-in method.

According to a Jupiter report, email customer service is worsening as response times have decreased, with 39 percent of sites taking three days or more to reply. Jupiter's David Schatsky pointed out that "failure to resolve requests via email is driving continued use of cost-intensive telephone work, negating any potential cost savings from handling inquiries via email."

"Managing opt-outs has always been a tricky issue for marketers," said Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop, concerning the results of his company's "Retail Email Marketing" study. The study encourages marketers to consider "implementing a re-engagement component to their opt-out process." Nussey added, "If you ask appropriately and remind recipients of the value of being on your list, you may find that enough customers will stay to make it well worth asking - failing that, you should try to get as much information as you can before the customer is gone for good."

How Email Can Lower Acquisition Costs

Here's an interesting article that discusses in detail how smart management of your email list can lower the cost of acquisitions to zero.

Email Open Rates Down, Click-Throughs Steady

ExactTarget has been slowly releasing info from their latest email marketing study. Yesterday, we reported on the "which day of the week is best to blast" aspect of the study. Today they've released results that show Email open rates declined 16.5 percent in 2005 while click-through rates remained steady.

Open rates declined to 35.5 percent in the 4th quarter of 2005 from 42.5 percent a year earlier.

Despite declining open rates, ExactTarget's study shows that click-through rates have remained steady over the past two years, with a slight upturn in the second half of 2005. Click-through rates for the 4th quarter of 2005 increased 10 percent to 6.6 percent from 6 percent a year earlier.

Another interesting finding of the study: on average, there are more unique clicks for each tracked open. The overall ratio of opens-to-clicks has declined from 6.6 in the 1st quarter of 2005 to 5.4 in 4th quarter of 2005.

Jupiter: Email Marketing to Grow, Spam to Drop

Email marketing spending will grow from $885 million in 2005 to $1.10 billion in 2010, and spam will drop drastically in that same period, according to a new report from JupiterResearch, B to B reports (via MediaBuyerPlanner). The average email user saw 3,253 spam emails in 2005; that number will drop to 1,640 in 2010.

B-to-C email marketing will grow 5 percent annually to $897 million by 2010, while B-to-B spending on email will grow by only 2.4 percent annually to $206 million in 2010, writes DM News.

Email address churn has been at its highest level within the last year thanks to the speed of broadband adoption in the U.S., making list hygiene a challenge for brokers.

Growth in the market will be driven by spending on retention, acquisition, and transactional email.