Deliverability Darwinism

Charles Darwin's famous theory of evolution is predicated on the concept of natural selection. Simply put, Darwin believed that individuals who are the best adapted to their environment are the most likely to survive and reproduce, resulting in the progressive evolution of a species that, generation by generation, augments its best traits. This has also been called "survival of the fittest," and the machinations occuring in today's email landscape--where user engagement is playing an increasingly important role in a senders' reputation and deliverability--we see Darwin's theory in action.

AOL pioneered the "spam button," empowering users to make decisions on the messages they wanted and those that they felt crossed a certain boundary. The "spam button" can be viewed as the same kind of evolution that happened between earlier proto-humanoids with walnut sized brains to current homo-sapiens with our large craniums. The email landscape is becoming smarter and requiring marketers to evolve along with it.

More is not more in today's email environment. More in today's market means more bounces, more complaints, more email sitting in email boxes where no one reads it or clicks on links both of which contribute to the positive evolution of the sender's reputation. Less is more is really the mantra that 21st century email marketers should adopt. Like the dinaosaurs that died out, their large hulking masses left behind in the ground, were survived by smaller more nimble creatures that were capable of living off scarcer resources. Opportunity abounds in the marketplace, but you can't stomp around like T-Rex, you'll simply scare off the web 3.0 dollars that reside in social, mobile and more targetted email which revolves around individuals as individuals rather than big segments of people clumped together for big mailings.

To preserve deliverability, marketers can no longer afford to continue mailing to recipients who are inactive and aren't demonstrating signs of positive engagement (opens, clicks, add to address book rates, etc.) Deliverability Darwinism is, in effect, forcing marketers to weed out the dead weight on their lists, and concentrate on the remaining active segments. The result? While cleaning lists may temporarily reduce the overall size of the file, the end result will be a more responsive one that boasts higher delivery, open and click-through rates. Email marketers' lists will evolve from a large mish mash of engaged and unengaged recipients into smaller, but highly targeted lists of happy customers.

Marketers have to make some smart decisions in order to evolve a nimble, smarter and ultimately more survivable engagement strategy in order to compete. Some of the questions include, do you know who is actively engaged with your marketing messages? Do you know which platforms they are using to read your emails? Is your email template a dinosaur 3 column lay out with every offer under the primordial sun or is it light weight with specific content for specific users? Have you developed a social networking strategy and taken advantage of the clan or tribe mentality that rewards and encourages the spread of good information, offers and news virally? Have you considered galvanizing your mobile efforts by engaging in a unique manner with mobile users through a dedicated mobile app, marketing campaigns or taken advantage of location based technologies?

If the answer to these questions is no then you may soon find yourself a fossil. Darwin's theories are an apt description of the evolutionary nature of technology. Marketing strategy must evolve in relation to medium of delivery and the smarter more engaged population of users. Evolve, make the leap, trim your lists or you may find yourself regarded as nothing more than a historic curiosity.

By Jordan Cohen
Sr. Director of Marketing & PR

Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications

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