Study: 82% of E-Marketers Deliverability is a Chal

Menlo Park, CA, April 14, 2006–Results of a new study were released today by EmailLabs, revealing that deliverability is a major challenge for email marketers, while filtering by ISPs and corporations is the main culprit for not getting emails delivered to the inbox.

In the survey sent to EmailLabs’ Intevation Report newsletter subscribers and ClickZ Network’s “E-Mail Delivery” column readers, 82 percent of email marketers say getting email messages delivered is a challenge for their organizations. Nearly 50 percent of respondents said that filtering by ISPs and corporations is the biggest delivery-related challenge, while another 25 percent said they lack the expertise or resources they need to address their deliverability issues.

Fifty-four percent of respondents believe that controllable issues such as permission practices, email content and coding have the greatest impact on deliverability. However, EmailLabs’ director of deliverability Kirill Popov says “There is a real disconnect for marketers between what they perceive is the impact on delivery and what ISPs actually do when deciding to block or not block an email,” said Popov. “While aggressive content may get you filtered, a high number of complaints or bounced emails will get you blocked.”

While 31% of marketers cite deliverability as a significant challenge, only 10 percent of respondents will make delivery their top email priority in 2006. Additionally, marketers tend to focus on deliverability actions within their control, with 50 percent modifying their email templates but only 17 percent switching to dedicated IP addresses and 6 percent utilizing a third-party accreditation service.

“While marketers have clearly recognized that they have delivery challenges they also are not allocating the necessary resources or taking the longer-term steps needed to minimize blocking and filtering of their emails,” said Loren McDonald, vice president of marketing at EmailLabs. “The 24 percent of marketers who have adopted authentication technologies is encouraging, but actively managing their email reputation and using third-party-accreditation services has yet to become mainstream.”

Following are selected questions and results from the survey. Full results can be found at: http://www.emaillabs.com/articles/email_articles/email_delivery_survey.html

1. How significant a challenge is deliverability for your company’s
email marketing program(s)?

30.5% Significant challenge
51.8% Somewhat of a challenge
10.3% Not a challenge at all
7.4% Don’t know/Not sure

2. What are your company’s key deliverability issues?

48.3% Filtering by ISPs
45.1% Filtering by corporations
31.5% Too many hard bounces
25.4% Lack of expertise or resources to address deliverability
15.3% Appearing on blacklists
11.8% Challenge-response requests
11.8% Too many spam complaints
9.6% Do not have any deliverability issues

3. Which of the following steps has your company (or agency/ESP)
taken in the last 12 months to gain improvement in the deliverability
of your company’s email marketing messages?

50.3% Modified our email template
24.2% Adopted authentication (SPF/SenderID/DomainKeys Identified
Mail)
21.7% No longer email to nonpermission lists
20.4% Utilized the services of a delivery-monitoring solution
16.9% Switched from shared to dedicated IP address
16.9% Did nothing
15.6% Formalized whitelisting process; established key ISP
relationships
10.5% Switched ESPs or moved from in-house to ESP
9.6% Switched to double opt-in
5.7% Utilized a third-party accreditation service

4. Which of the following do you believe has the GREATEST impact
on getting your emails delivered to subscribers’ inboxes?

27.4% Permission practices
26.5% Email content and coding
12.8% Spam complaint and bounce rates
11.9% Being on ISP whitelists
5.3% On or off blacklists