Email Marketing Resources

Yesterday we released our latest deliverability study, which showed that nearly one in four opt-in email marketing messages were not delivered to recipients’ inboxes on Cyber Monday. Celebrated as the busiest day of the year for e-commerce transactions, this past Monday saw inbox delivery rates plummet to a 7-day low of just 76.2%. 

Soaring volumes caused problems because a) ISP networks and delivery queues were overburdened with everyone mailing at the same time and b) faced with pressure to drive a ton of web site sales, many marketers mailed to inactive segments of their lists (which also has long term negative consequences).

One in Four Emails Sent on Crucial Online Holiday Shopping Day Never Made it to the Inbox, Shows Data from Pivotal Veracity

PHOENIX, Ariz., December 2, 2009—Nearly one in four email marketing messages were not delivered to recipients’ inboxes on Cyber Monday, according to new deliverability data released today by Pivotal Veracity, the industry leader in cross-platform email deliverability and optimization solutions. Celebrated as the busiest day of the year for e-commerce transactions, this past Monday saw inbox delivery rates plummet to a 7-day low of just 76.2%.

AOL made an announcement last week about its enhanced whitelist—an internal list of low-spam-complaint mailers whose messages get delivered with graphics and links intact—that, in and of itself, has little effect on most marketers who use e-mail.

The note has vast implications, however, on where ISPs' spam-filtering techniques are headed and what marketers had better start doing if they want their e-mail lists to continue to perform. Click here to read Deirdre Baird's email engagement insights...

AOL announced today that they are changing how the Enhanced Whitelist works. For those that don't know there are effectively two whitelists at AOL, the regular whitelist and the enhanced whitelist. The standard whitelist is open to any mailer who meets the basic requirements, the enhanced whitelist has historically been comprised of the top IPs with the lowest complaints of the standard whitelist. Emails that qualified for the enhanced whitelist would arrive to the inbox with links and images enabled and turned on.  The enhanced whitelist isn't going away but according to Christine of AOL, the method by which IPs will be added to the enhanced whitelist have evolved. 

A little over 10 days ago I wrote about deliverability in the first 11 days of the holiday season and how it was reflected in industry wide benchmarks. It's time now to look at the next 11 some odd days as our run up to the all important Black Friday is no longer on the horizon but quite literally at our door steps.

During routine testing today we discovered a problem with the MySpace Email Client. It appears that emails sent to @myspace.com email addresses are being overlayed by a right hand tower ad. The right side of the email is vanishing under the ad and making it impossible to see what's beneath; this poses a potential brand integrity problem for senders.

Internet advertising remains a singular bright spot in the nation's battered economy. Despite a large retraction in tradtional ad spending, ZenithOptimedia reported that $56 billion will have been invested in online channels in 2009, 10% more than last year. But while CMOs embrace the latest fads and Twitter themselves into oblivion, email remains a poorly funded afterthought, attracting a paltry $1.2 billion this year, according to Forrester Research.

Partnership Provides Marketers ‘Never-Before Seen’ Insight on Email Delivery, Interaction

It's the time of the year when you start thinking about how many pounds your turkey will have to be to feed all of your relatives and what kind of shenanigans will ensue when Uncle Bob has one too many highballs. However pre-occupied you may be with family and the impending feasts, there's a little voice—a scared little voice—wondering what you could possibly do to improve your overall deliverability and marketing performance.

You've heard it here first: 2010 will be the year that *true* mobile marketing takes off...

The iPhone is the most popular consumer electonics hardware in history (Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley recently produced the evidence at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco), and has set off a competitive wave that is bringing the best of the rich media, high-speed World Wide Web (and even more with unique mobile apps, etc.) to peoples' handhelds with the introductions of Droid, Palm Pre and other cool new devices that assuredly are on the way.