Email service providers (ESPs) battle on the front lines of the email deliverability wars. Clients depend on them to get their email through to the inbox, but in truth, most factors that influence deliverability are in the client's - not the ESP's - control. This makes it even more critical for ESPs to have accurate deliverability data so they can help their clients.
eROI, an email service provider in Portland, Oregon, formed a strategic alliance with email deliverability expert, Return Path, to provide deep-level deliverability data that will best help clients.
Return Path helps eROI in two key areas:
1. Identify clients who have delivery problems so eROI can consult with and help them resolve issues that are causing deliverability failures.
2. Evaluate email content to assure proper rendering in the inbox.
Client Issues - Understanding Your Email Reputation
Shared IPs can help ESPs scale their business and save clients money. But since the reputation of an IP address is the primary method for receivers to evaluate mailers, shared IPs can mean that mailers with poor habits bring down the deliverability of everyone else sharing that hardware space.
Through Return Path's Sender Score Reputation Monitor, eROI is able to identify the mailers that are causing problems for a given IP. By campaign segmenting, it's quick and simple to see exactly who is bringing down reputation scores - and point the way to improvement. eROI uses this data to both segregate problem mailers by IP and, more importantly, to consult with them and offer specific advice on how they can improve their programs.
"We aren't interested in kicking mailers out of the system," said Ryan Buchanan, CEO of eROI. "We'd much rather help our clients become good mailers so that everyone can succeed to their full potential. Return Path helps us do that by giving us the tools to identify and consult. Our clients appreciate the valuable advice we are able to bring them. But, at the same time we are able to reward the very best mailers with a 'good, better, best' server system that segments our clients by reputation. This ensures that the best mailers reap the benefits of their good practices without having to add the expense of dedicated IPs."
Content Rendering
Another important aspect of email campaigns is how they look once they reach the inbox. The key is to identify rendering and delivery problems before you send campaigns. By leveraging Return Path's Campaign Preview, eROI is able to help their clients ensure proper rendering in all the major email readers. Case in point: eROI client Ogilvy One Worldwide.
A lot of companies don't pay too much attention to Lotus Notes because of its small marketshare. That's not the case for Ogilvy One Worldwide and its Digital Innovations email newsletter. With a client base that includes IBM (a user of Lotus Notes), Ogilvy needed to be sure their emails looked great in every environment. Using Return Path's Campaign Preview tool, eROI was able to identify content issues that would have caused rendering problems in Lotus Notes. Ogilvy tweaked its creative, and now the newsletter looks great in every inbox.
"Ad agencies rely on their email creative to project their image - having their newsletter mangled in the inbox of their biggest clients is simply unacceptable," Buchanan said. "Having a tool to test their templates, Ogilvy One was able to ensure that the newsletters would look great before they started sending."
Buchanan added, "Using Return Path's tools and services has made us even more efficient and has enhanced the strategic value we provide clients. Our deliverability knowledge has greatly increased thanks to Return Path."
