DMA warns of deliverability pitfalls for email marketers
The Email Marketing Council of the Direct Marketing Assoication is warning that the rising volume of spam is putting deliverability of legitimate marketing emails at risk unless practitioners adopt best practice.
Publishing a white paper on the issue, the council says that a new definition of email deliverability needs to be adopted in order to ensure messages are reaching the inbox.
Guy Hanson, business development director at Database Group Interactive, co-author of the report and a member of the DMA EMC, says: “With an estimated 130 billion spam messages broadcast every day and ISPs reacting to the barrage, the deliverability challenge has never been greater. ISP acceptance rates provide no guarantee that the subscriber actually sees the message while sender reputation monitors, spam filter vendors and blacklist operators all play key roles in determining whether the email ends up in the inbox or not.”
He adds: “Companies that fail to understand these issues risk jeopardising their email marketing strategy as well as the company’s bottom line.” The white paper challenges email marketers to address the portion of their emails that are not getting delivered and to understand why this is happening.
One of the ten improvements it proposes is better data collection processes. Permissioning mechanisms are a major aspect of this, with a double opt-in preferred, although this is not a legal requirement. “Go for the strongest mechanism that your programme will support,” the paper recommends.
Simon Bowker, managing director of eCircle, member of the DMA EMC and co-author of the report, adds: “Understanding good delivery is more than just a technical issue – marketers need to be aware of its effect on email revenue and ROI. While complicated, good deliverability is not difficult to achieve. Our guide aims to provide simple, clear and practical steps that anyone can follow to improve their inbox placement.”
