The Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, 2H 2009 from Return Path

It's easy to believe that deliverability failures must be happening to someone else. But what you don't know about your deliverability leaves your business vulnerable and decreases the amount of revenue you could be generating from the email channel. What's a smart marketer to do? 1. Get the data you need. Know where your email goes and why. Don't believe the bounce myth - that whatever gets sent and doesn't bounce must be reaching the inbox. Gaining access to relevant deliverability data is crucial for marketers to be able to make accurate decisions about their program's effectiveness. This report is based on the Return Path Mailbox Monitor system which seeds the databases of our clients with known good email addresses. We then monitor whether or not email sent to those addresses is delivered. These reports often show a wide disparity between the delivered metric shown on the client's standard response report and the inbox placement rate (IPR) which is the actual number of messages that arrive in the inbox. 2. Take deliverability failures seriously. Deliverability failures cost businesses a lot of oney. There is significant lost revenue from email that does not get delivered to the inbox. Consumer research consistently shows that people do not check their bulk or junk folders for marketing messages. And even if they do, most of the non-delivered mail isn't there - it's completely missing. Email that consumers don't have access to will not generate a response. 3. Don't use revenue or response as a proxy for deliverability. Assuming that a program that generates revenue or gets good response must be delivered to all the inboxes that matter is a mistake. Think about how much money you may be leaving on the table if a significant chunk of your list isn't seeing the messages you send. 4. Don't accept deliverability failures as inevitable or unfixable. The good news is that we have clients who are able to maintain consistently high deliverability rates across all ISPs. Remember: 80% is the average. So while that means there are companies at 60% it also means that there are companies at 100%. 5. Take responsibility for where your email lands. While your IT team or email service provider can be important partners, you are responsible for the deliverability of your email. Most of the major drivers of poor inbox placement rates are the direct result of marketing practices, not technical ones. These include complaints, which spike when email is unexpected or undervalued by the recipient and spam traps, which are most often found on lists that are old or have been built with poorly sourced data.