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Email Deliverability:The Battle to the Inbox
Arend Henderson, Chief Analytics Officer
Q Interactive
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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Q Interactive Overview
Connect advertisers and consumers using
Consumer Requested Marketing
Relevancy, Permission, Privacy
10 Years’ expertise in email marketing
Work with more than 1,500 leading brands
ADVERTISERS
Hundreds of
Advertisers
CONSUMER
REQUESTED
MARKETING
100 Million
Requests
Affirmative Consent
Permission & PrivacyNETWORK PARTNERS
BRANDED SITES
10 Million Unique
Consumers Monthly
THE Q NETWORK
True
ConversionENGINE
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The Battle to the Inbox:High level issues affecting deliverability
Authentication
Hygiene &
Suppression
QA –
Rendering & Delivery
ISP Compliance /
Header Info.
SPAM Scoring
Legislation &
Regulation
Whitelisting &
Reputation Services
Creative / CopyOffer Quality
Targeting &
Segmentation
Complaints
Filters
False Positives
Personal Adaptive Filters Inbox
Delivery
Monitoring
Unsub
Processing
Complaint
Feedback
Loops
Bounce
Processing
Hygiene & eCOAResponse ProcessingModeling & Analytics
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The Battle to the InboxHigh 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
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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
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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
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Use of Complaints By ISPs andReputation 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
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FACT: Your email is spam if thereceiver 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 not recall reporting email from the sender as
Junk/Spam
MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, September-November 2007
0% 20% 40% 60%
25%
41%
20%
15%
13%
52%
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FACT: Your email is spam if thereceiver thinks it is
What drives consumers to hit that button?
Consumers Reporting
Emails That Aren’t Spam
MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, September-November 2007
21% knowingly report
email that is not spam
as such
No
51%
Don’t know/
No opinion
28%
Yes
21%
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FACT: Your email is spam if thereceiver 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
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
File a complaint about that specific email
MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, September-November 2007
0% 20% 40% 60%
47%
21%
8%
56%
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ISPs and reputation services are increasinglylooking to consumer complaints as the primarymeasure used to filter "unwanted email” andnot just spam
Consumer satisfaction will increasingly drivethe deliverability of your email program
The definition of spam has changed frompermission to perception based
Strong permission standards and list hygienepractices aren't enough anymore
FACTS to Face
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Clickthroughs
Complaints
Member Value
Fundamental weakness ofcomplaint rate filtering
Correlation of response and complaint
means most valuable consumers
generate the most complaints/feedback
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Percentage of
Companies Affected
by False Positives
False positive email filtering
Legitimate email that’s misidentified
as spam by ISPs
100 Consumer and
business emailers –
49% were affected by
false positives
49%51%
MarketingSherpa and Pivotal
Veracity, Emailer Practice and false
Positive Study, November 2007
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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
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Practical approaches tomanaging complaint rates today
Top 3 reasons consumers said they reported
email as SpamI don't remember signing up to receive email from the sender
Too much email from the sender
Email was not of interest to me
13%
15%
20%
25%
41%
52%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
I do not recall reporting email from
the sender as Junk/Spam
I found the email offensive
I receive too much email from all
senders
I received too much email from the
sender
The email received was not of
interest to me
I didn't sign up to receive email
from the sender
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I don't remember signing up toreceive 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
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Collecting the right information
Name and email
address is not
enough!
Qualify
Set communication
expectations
Find out why they
are interested in your
company
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Email was not of interest to me…
RelevancyDemo/Geo/Behavior Segmentation
Integrating complaint data to measure
campaign effectiveness
The complaint/response correlation conundrum
Demographical
Geographical
Behavioral
Send
emailComplaints
received
Integrate
complaint data
Send
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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
Customer Engagement
Em
ail
Fre
qu
en
cy
Increase frequency
to most engaged
customers
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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.
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Credits/Thank You
Arend Henderson, Q Interactive
312-224-5074