The Root of Poor Email Deliverability

The Root of Poor
Email Deliverability
Insights from Litmus’ 2017 State of Email Deliverability report

Poor deliverability costs brands money.
It results in direct costs from
remediating blocks and blacklistings
and—usually larger—indirect costs
from not being able to reach all of your
active subscribers and customers.
@LitmusApp @ChadSWhite

However, being blacklisted and, in
particular, being blocked, are fairly
common.

The good news is that being blocked
or blacklisted doesn’t appear to be a
major hindrance to email marketing
success.

Marketers who describe their email
programs as successful are only 19%
less likely to have had their emails
blocked in the past 12 months (31.6%
vs. 38.8%). And successful programs
are pretty much just as likely as other
programs to be blacklisted.

Even though deliverability problems
don’t stop email programs from being
successful, that doesn’t mean that
marketers shouldn’t do more to avoid
blocks and blacklistings.

Deliverability problems are not a cost
of doing business.

These situations are avoidable, as
certain practices clearly lower email
marketers’ risks, while others absolutely
raise them—sometimes dramatically.

Based on our 2017 State of Email
Survey of more than 3,500 marketers,
our State of Email Deliverability report
identifies many of these beneficial and
risky email behaviors.

Over the next 45 minutes, we’re going
to discuss two sets of behaviors that
can help marketers improve their email
deliverability:
• Burnt Hand Deliverability Practices
• Root Cause Deliverability Practices

Chad S. White
Research Director
Litmus
Author of Email Marketing Rules
Jay Brangiforte
Product Manager, Delivery
Litmus

Litmus’ web-based software works
with your existing email service
provider to give you better visibility
into subscriber experience problems—
and easily fix them.

Litmus offers:
• Email Previews in 70+ clients
• Builder, our email HTML editor
• Spam Testing in 20+ filters
• Checklist for quality assurance
• Email Analytics for new insights

Burnt Hand
Deliverability Practices

We call this first set of behaviors
Burnt Hand Deliverability Practices
because…

These are tools and behaviors that
are known to improve deliverability
that are actually used at higher rates
by brands that have been
blacklisted in the past 12 months
than by brands that haven’t been.

These tools and behaviors are all
potential parts of a deliverability
remediation plan that you’d use to
recover from a blacklisting. These
include…

35.3% of brands that have been blacklisted in past 12 months use it
25.1% of brands that haven’t been blacklisted in past 12 months use it

78.2% 75.6% 53.9%
of brands that have been blacklisted in past 12 months use it
69.2% 66.0% 46.1%
of brands that haven’t been blacklisted in past 12 months use it

63.2% of brands that have been blacklisted in past 12 months do it
53.9% of brands that haven’t been blacklisted in past 12 months do it

So a good remediation plan includes:
• Use email address verification
• Authenticate & encrypt your emails
• Do spam filter testing
• Manage your inactive subscribers
• Monitor your deliverability rate

But don’t wait until your brand suffers
serious problems before adopting an
deliverability remediation plan.
Proactively adopt the behaviors and
tools that can help you avoid trouble in
the first place.

Root Cause
Deliverability Practices

We call this second set of behaviors
Root Cause Deliverability Practices
because…

These are tools and behaviors that
are also used at higher rates by
brands that have been blacklisted
in the past 12 months than by brands
that haven’t been—but some of these
are known to be problematic.

These tools and behaviors aren’t
always a part of remediation plans
and therefore tend not to change
even after deliverability problems
occur.

But the most interesting and impactful
findings were around subscriber
acquisition sources. We looked at
those used by brands that suffered
recent deliverability problems and
those that hadn’t.

While none of those are among the
most popular subscriber acquisition
sources, they’re not uncommon.
They’re the 8th, 10th, 11th, 15th, and
16th most popular acquisition sources,
among the 20 we asked about.

Some of these acquisitions sources
are inherently problematic, but
some can be good if used properly.
Let’s talk about each of those…

Is the acquisition source redeemable?
• Email list rental

If you rent a list from a company, you
should supply the company with the
message that you want sent. The list
owner then sends that message on
your behalf to their list—which you
never see—using their usual name
and email address, not yours.

The unsubscribe link included in this
email is an opt-out for the list owner
only, not you. The list owner typically
includes a tag in the subject line and
a message at the top of the email
indicating that the message is from
one of their partners.

This arrangement helps ensure that
your message will be well received by
the recipients, because the list owner
would suffer unsubscribes and spam
complaints if they sent a message
from a partner that wasn’t a good fit
for their list.

We polled more than 300 marketers
in July and found evidence of lots of
confusion around how a list rental
should be done. Some list rentals
were essential list purchases.

• Email list rental YES
• Co-registration

def. co-registration: When a brand
allows visitors to their website, users
of their app, etc. to sign up to receive
emails from third-parties, often while
or after signing up for email from the
brand

• Co-registration YES
• Email list purchase

What are the risks of buying a list?
• Violation of ESP’s terms of service
• Hard bounces
• Spam complaints
• Spam traps
• Low engagement
• Negative word of mouth

• Email list purchase NO
• Lead gen form (ebooks, etc.)

What are the problems with lead
gen forms?
• Poor permissioning
• Pre-checked boxes & hidden opt-ins
• Poor expectation setting
• Poor anti-bot protections

• Lead gen form (ebooks, etc.) YES
• Signup via direct mail, etc.

What are the problems with
signups via direct mail, etc.?
• Transcription of handwriting

• Lead gen form (ebooks, etc.) YES
• Signup via direct mail, etc. YES

The pattern here is that some brands
are hesitant to lose subscribers—by
acknowledging bounces, enabling
unsubscribes, or turning off signup
touchpoints—even if doing so would
improve the health of their program.

If you don’t know the performance of
your subscribers by acquisition
source, put that at the top of your to-
do list, especially if your deliverabilty
isn’t great. Often problems are
caused by just one source.

In the follow-up email for attending
this webinar, we’re including a special
offer for a free trial of Litmus that
gives you access to our new Spam
Testing functionality. And for those of
you who are already Litmus users, be
sure to check it out.

Thank You!
Any Questions?
You can find all of our
State of Email Survey Research at
litmus.com/stateofemail

The Root of Poor Email Deliverability

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