This document provides tips for improving email marketing performance. It discusses how sending identity, sender reputation, and subscriber engagement impact inbox placement. It recommends optimizing list quality, sending practices like timing and suppression, as well as copy and creative elements like subject lines. Testing is key to improving open and click-through rates. The overall message is that a variety of factors beyond just deliverability need to be considered to make emails effective.
3. We Know Email
We have strong partnerships and access to rich data that
grant us insight into all aspects of the email landscape.Partners
We’ve built the world’s leading deliverability and
optimization products.Solutions
Our service team is comprised of the best and brightest
minds in the email industry.Services
We work with the world’s top brands across a wide variety
of industries.Clients
4. Partners
Return Path has built strategic partnerships with more
than 100 companies across the email space, including:
ESPs & Marketing Clouds Mailbox Providers Technology Partners
5. Solutions
Deliverability
We offer the industry’s most
recognized and valued certified
whitelist and data-driven solutions to
help email marketers understand,
increase, and monitor their
deliverability and reputation, enabling
them to immediately take action to
ensure their messages reach
subscribers’ inboxes.
Optimization
Our optimization solutions allow email
marketers to ensure their emails are
standing out in the inbox. With
increased insight into how, where, and
when customers are reading your
email, you can improve opens, clicks,
conversions, and ultimately your return
on email investment.
15. What Defines Sender Reputation
Length of
Sending
History
Message
Quality
Subscriber
Engagement
Complaints List Quality Infrastructure
👎 🛀 🏠
🥇 📝 💍
16. What Defines Subscriber Engagement
Messages read: A positive indicator
that subscribers want to receive
messages from a particular sender
Messages forwarded: A positive
indicator that the recipient desired the
message and that others may want
it, too
Messages replied to: A positive
indicator that a message is desired,
and likely personal in nature
Messages marked as “not spam:”
Subscribers marking messages in the
spam folder as “not spam” is a very
strong signal to mailbox providers that
email should have been delivered to
the inbox
Messages marked as spam:
A negative signal that email is spam
and does not belong in the inbox
Messages deleted before reading:
A negative indicator that your message
wasn’t relevant or desired
30. High engagement with sender /
High activity mailbox
High engagement with sender
/ Low activity mailbox
Low engagement with sender
/ High activity mailbox
Low engagement with sender /
Low activity mailbox
Specifically, relative engagement
34. Tweak sending order to drive higher apparent global
reputation
1
Tweak timing to make relative engagement higher2
Suppress known dead addresses3
For Gmail, Three Sending Practices Matter
35. People Open Based on Recognition,
Subject Line
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Who it's from Subject Line Offer First few lines of
email
Do not open or
receive email
offers
Expected length
or size of email
% of subscribers
36. How Long Should My Subject Line Be?
• The most common length is
41 – 50 characters.
• Subject lines 61 – 70
characters have the highest
open rate.
• However, there’s no real
correlation between length
and open rate.