Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation An Adaptive Delivery White Paper

Transcription

1 Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation An Adaptive Delivery White Paper By Len Shneyder

2 Published by: Message Systems, Inc Guilford Road, Suite 100 Columbia, MD (phone) x312 (toll free) messagesystems.com Copyright 2013 Message Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without the written permission of Message Systems, Inc. Message Systems is a registered trademark of Message Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

3 Table of Contents Executive Summary Today s Landscape... 2 Deliverability Still Matters Deliverability Today Measuring Deliverability has Unique Challenges... 5 Improving Deliverability Through Intelligent Automation Adaptive Delivery Automates Critical Deliverability Functions The Business Case for Improving Deliverability with Adaptive Delivery Delivery Success Across Industries and Channels Conclusion

4 Executive Summary is a Top Revenue Driver for Organizations According to Forrester, investment in marketing will grow 10% annually between 2011 and i Spend on and other interactive digital marketing channels will approach $77 billion! ROI continues to be a top channel in the overall digital marketing mix while providing an excellent launching pad for cross-channel marketing strategies and tethering together a sophisticated, cross-channel approach to customer interactions. ii Deliverability Resources are Scarce Deliverability iii remains a top priority in achieving ROI and promoting brand stickiness across marketing and transactional channels. Highly specialized personnel with expert deliverability knowledge are scarce and costly, making it necessary for organizations to hire consultants and seek other, expensive means of preventing revenue loss through non-delivered . Much of deliverability remains a mundane and highly manual task centered on monitoring and interpreting message streams, triaging problems, dealing with deferred messages and warming up new IPs for production. Today s industry benchmarks commonly cite the ongoing problem in 1 in 5 s never arrive to the inbox. With the 4 major domains making up nearly 60 70% of a typical B2C mailer s list, and many corporations moving their to cloud providers such as Gmail, employing manual processes to triage and handle deliverability problems is not only inefficient, they can be terribly ineffective. Automation Proactively Reduces Deliverability Risks Enter Message Systems Adaptive Delivery (A.D.), the first solution of its kind specifically designed to automate the monitoring of bounces and complaints, and adjust connection rates and throughput accordingly. Adaptive Delivery achieves a number of business and operational goals for organizations employing the technology including: Increased revenue by improving overall deliverability and brand reputation leading directly to increased clicks and conversions. Lower Call Center costs due to higher transactional delivery such as password resets, shipping confirmations, etc. Labor cost savings by mitigating the need to find and hire full time, dedicated deliverability personnel. Improving deliverability is a critical step in ensuring brand stickiness, boosting customer lifetime value and promoting content across channels, platforms and devices. Adaptive Delivery helps to ensure that the foundational channel of every organization s digital marketing mix remains vibrant, lucrative and the key to long-lasting digital conversations between companies and their customers. Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation 1

5 Today s Landscape Two-thirds of marketers state that delivers excellent to good ROI. While social media is getting all the buzz and attention these days, in reality, remains a highly lucrative channel in today s digital marketing mix. According to findings, two-thirds of organizations state that delivers excellent ROI. iv Studies put the ROI from at around $40.56 for every $1 of investment, making it by far the most lucrative channel. v New customer acquisition through has quadrupled over the past four years, while social has barely grown. vi One-to-many communications, combined with strong personalization features and the portability of the message format, has empowered organizations with a communication channel that allows them to reach recipients anywhere, anytime. Companies no longer have to wait for a customer to return to their desktop, the inbox is in everyone s pocket. Even though the return and branding power of remains strong and measurable, nearly 1 in 5 s wind up in the recipient s spam folder or are outright blocked. vii Some pundits have said that we ve evolved beyond the age of deliverability and are now focused on engagement. To be fair, engagement is a critical component in achieving and sustaining s ROI but, the fact of the matter remains: if the message doesn t arrive, there is no engagement. This holds true both for marketing messages and transactional messages. Let s assume that you have compelling and engaging content, targeting based on multiple factors identifying the right recipient, and an offer that can t be refused. All of this is useless if the doesn t make it to the inbox. Transactional messages that miss the mark can cost organizations $12 or more viii these are automated responses, traditionally handled by humans. Over time, the cost to an organization in terms of non-delivered marketing and transactional can be in the millions. Deliverability should be a top priority for every company on the internet: Acquisition Channel Growth 10% Organic Search (15.8%) CPC Percent of Customers Acquired 5% Affiliate Banner Ads Facebook Twitter 0% Message Systems

6 Deliverability Still Matters Compounding the deliverability problem is the relative scope of legitimate vs. the tidal wave of spam. According to numbers put out by Pingdom ix 52.5 trillion s were sent in 2012 of this staggering volume, 68.8% were identified as spam. On an average day, postmasters at the largest ISPs and mailbox providers including Yahoo!, Microsoft/ Outlook.com, AOL and Gmail see upwards of 144 billion messages. Postmaster teams use sophisticated tools to quickly identify and discern legitimate from spam. The genesis of these tools started as keyword filters that simply looked for language indicative of spam. Around 2002, AOL invented the Report as Spam button x ushering in a new, egalitarian era by empowering users with the ability to mark s as spam and inform their provider of unwanted content. The reality of this significant change meant that even legitimate could be marked as spam, thereby completely changing the playing field. By some accounts, the emergence of the Report as Spam option could be viewed as the dawn of deliverability as a critical business function. Eleven years after the arrival of the Report as Spam button companies still struggle with false positives and the minefield of anti-spam solutions that litter the front porch of every ISP in the world. From off-the-shelf solutions to custom built anti-spam filters and systems, delivery to the world s most important ISPs remains challenging. Message filtering and blocking can decimate a marketer s campaign or severely delay time-sensitive communications such as password resets, timed offers and shipping notifications. The immediacy of today s market place driven by the rapid rise and adoption of smartphones has put new emphasis on sending , sending it quickly and ensuring it arrives in order to take advantage of fleeting windows of opportunity. Deliverability personnel across ESPs, in-house marketing teams and consultants struggle with vanishing ISP postmaster teams. Resources once viewed as critical to success, across the industry, are becoming increasingly scarce. The automation of deliverability remediation is being pushed to the start of the SMTP conversation. Increasingly, rate limiting/throttling and deferrals are used by ISPs to slow down and help manage the load on their infrastructure. Deliverability Today Deliverability personnel are charged with keeping the lines of communication open. Too often this means manually checking log files, setting up ongoing alerting mechanisms, knowing proper remediation processes and coordinating across departments for postmortem analysis and pre-campaign planning. In a perfect world, deliverability should be a loss prevention measure. Every that isn t delivered to a recipient s inbox because delivery mechanisms such as authentication are not properly formatted or is sent too quickly is a lost opportunity. In actuality, deliverability is a massive cost that manifests in terms of full-time employees, tools to measure efficacy, disaster recovery planning, relationship management, and consultants that provide highly specialized advice and development services. Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation 3

7 A typical B2C or B2B, in-house mailer may hire one or more deliverability personnel and charge them with: Configuration and Basic Deliverability Establishing available feedback loops (FBLs) Whitelisting new IPs Addressed by Momentum s bounce module. Adaptive Delivery automates and streamlines the most time-consuming and reactive deliverability functions thus reducing cost and improving overall inbox placement. Establishing relationships with ISP personnel where appropriate Updating bounce definitions Reactive, Firefighting, Revenue Loss/Service Degradation Prevention Monitoring hard bounces Monitoring soft bounces Monitoring FBLs for complaint spikes Adjusting throughput, connection rates and throttling to comply with ISP requirements Creating and executing ramp up/warm up plans to build positive reputation on new IPs Long Term Projects Migrating IPs if necessary Working with systems administrators to fine tune delivery systems in accordance with industry best practices Monitoring black lists and remediating listings if they occur Policy and Compliance Participating in industry groups to ensure best practice compliance Maintaining policy compliance including CAN-SPAM, CASL, EU Data Privacy Directive and more Advising in-house marketing teams, and 3rd-party agencies on best practice construction Testing templates and determining spam characteristics before campaigns are sent This list represents the typical set of duties associated with a deliverability operations employee. Consultants can provide a stopgap measure, but the ongoing cost of keeping these highly skilled individuals on the payroll can be prohibitive. It s not unusual for organizations to put a systems administrator, someone focused on maintaining the mailing infrastructure, in charge of deliverability. More often than not, systems administrators don t make the best deliverability personnel although they have the technical aptitude to dissect bounces, they may lack the soft science to run policy and possess a thorough understanding of the nuances associated with high volume deployments. 4 Message Systems

8 The problem for Service Providers (ESPs) is further compounded as they can require three or more deliverability personnel; depending on their volume, to monitor hundreds of millions of outbound s and the massive inbound volume generated in response. For ESPs, volume isn t the only challenge: vetting and preventing reputation contamination across mailers means understanding the fall-out from campaigns and firewalling mail streams and mailers of differing quality. Measuring Deliverability Has Unique Challenges Complicating the deliverability landscape is the nagging question of how do you measure deliverability? There are very limited approaches to gaining a clear picture of deliverability: 1. Seedlist Testing. Tracking placement by including test account addresses (Seedlists) with a campaign, or sending test messages before a campaign is launched. Vendors including Return Path, 250 OK and IBM offer variously priced tools that can automate this process. Tools help diagnose delivery problems, or allow you to test content before launching a campaign, to look for potentially hazardous verbiage, images or HTML constructs. Given the relative inactivity and limited number of test accounts, this data must be viewed through other dimensions to determine its overall value and any potential actions. 2. Monitoring log files and conversions. This is by far the most accurate picture of how deliverability is shaping up. Log files give you the clearest picture of how is accepted or rejected, while conversions can paint the picture about how well your content or offer is performing. The down side is that log file monitoring takes effort in the form of development to create tools, and personnel that know what they are doing. Too often companies struggle with writing custom scripts and programs to analyze vast data sets in real time, or they use open source solutions that don t deliver the necessary insight. But what if there was a tool that knew what needed to happen and how to react to very specific delivery events? Measuring deliverability by running seed-list tests before or after campaigns are sent, and comparing results to clicks/conversions, can unearth nagging problems but is ultimately insufficient to ensure ongoing success. The goal for sophisticated organizations relying on timely messages to drive revenue is to avoid problems. Monitoring tools may help you resolve a problem after it happens but can do nothing to help you avoid them in the future. The best way to avoid delivery problems is by employing systems and technology ideally engineered to sending large volumes of and react in real-time to sending conditions as they happen. For us, the Message Systems platform is all about deliverability. For our customers, it s throughput. Taken together, it s a win/win. We ve been sending nearly 60 million messages a week at 99.15% deliverability [Deliverability was in the mid 80 s before Message Systems]. It was as high as 99.3% last week! James Thompson, Systems Manager Infusionsoft, Unfortunately, deliverability has evolved as a hands-on-job that requires monitoring and analysis to prevent opportunity loss and leaving money on the table. The problem is compounded by a kind of tribal mentality that assumes deliverability is a reactive, labor-intensive firefight. Deliverability can be, but it really doesn t have to be. Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation 5

9 Scenario 1 You run a daily deal site that sends daily, time-sensitive s. The deal is only good if 10,000 people purchase it in the first 24 hours. Despite creating compelling content, a deep discount and a flexible HTML template that displays beautifully on mobile and web clients, your is deferred by Yahoo! Your B2C list is comprised of roughly 35% Yahoo! addresses rendering it impossible for 1/3 of your audience to see the deal, and making it less likely for the other 2/3 to muster enough purchases to make it come through. When the queues begin to back up, deliverability personnel will scramble to analyze any bounces that they receive. Once they determine it s a deferral they ll stop and ideally wait for four hours. Mailing will resume and if a deferral is hit again, they will be forced to wait. Adaptive Delivery constantly monitors queues and reacts when a deferral happens. The system tests the water before resuming normal mailing throughput by cautiously ramping up volume to ensure there are no sudden setbacks by delivering a payload too quickly. Instead of pulling costly deliverability staff off long term proactive projects and analysis, Adaptive Delivery automates and reacts to common deliverability challenges allowing for technical staff to focus on other issues rather than mundane fire fighting. TRIAGE ISSUES DEFERRALS BLOCKING DELIVERABILITY MAN-HOURS LABOR COSTS Without Adaptive Delivery 2 6 hours Check every 4 hours 1 5 days depending Net loss 3 days / week 2 Deliverability Staff = $180K / year With Adaptive Delivery Automated Automated Avoid numerous blocks through receiver preference compliance 0, with marked improvement in overall throughput over time 1 Deliverability Staff Member $100K / year Scenario 2 Your website allows visitors to reset their password in the event they forget it. Password resets and other transactional s including purchase receipts, order confirmations etc. represent a significant portion of any organization s traffic. But to be effective these s must be timely. Delays or blocks that result in not arriving as requested can result in lost revenue or increased support center calls. According to Gartner nearly 30% of all call center calls are for password resets. xi For a deliverability analyst, monitoring a stream of transactional mail that is either constant or sent in irregular intervals, is extremely time consuming and nearly impossible as it happens around the clock. Adaptive Delivery can keep track of critical communications and alert the team when a delivery problem arises. Through granular segmentation of mail streams based on content and other characteristics, Adaptive Delivery shortens delivery windows and saves companies money. Password resets represent the automation of Tier 1 support issues that previously clogged call centers. Regardless of the reason, internal routing delays or external delivery issues, for a company to save time and money, transactional mail must be prioritized. Through Adaptive Delivery, time-sensitive transactional mail is kept separate from bulk campaigns ensuring an internal firewall and faster delivery times for messages in response to user-generated actions. This is part and parcel of delivery automation that prevents revenue loss, protects the organization s brand and ensures that lines of communication remain open. Avg. cost of PSW Reset calls % of Support calls for resent PSW For a call center handling 4500 daily calls Annual costs Without Adaptive Delivery $12 / Call 30 35% $16,200: Cost of PSW reset calls due to non-delivery of automated resets per day $4.2 Million With Adaptive Delivery $12 / Call 1 2% based on nondelivery related issues or user error $540: Cost of PSW reset calls due to non-delivery of automated resets per day $140,400 6 Message Systems

10 Improving Deliverability Through Intelligent Automation Message Systems Adaptive Delivery, a fully integrated module within the Momentum platform, solves many of the ongoing deliverability management processes faced by today s marketers and ESPs. Adaptive Delivery provides proactive monitoring of outbound message streams and monitors ISP responses bounces, blocks, etc. in real time in order to tune and optimize inbox performance. By automating much of the rote, mundane deliverability work, companies can scale their business without hiring more personnel, or reinvest existing staff into other, longer term projects. With growing volumes comes new delivery challenges that can hamper and impede the kind of growth that today s marketplace demands of fast-paced startups and long established, profitable enterprises. Adaptive Delivery Automates Critical Deliverability Functions Adaptive Delivery can replace many of the manual processes currently taken on by deliverability personnel it functions in tandem with Message Systems powerful bounce module that negates the need to constantly parse log files to update bounce definitions. Adaptive Delivery proactively monitors message traffic to avoid setbacks leveraging Momentum s more than 5,000 unique bounce definitions and extended descriptions that roll up into 20 actionable categories, Adaptive Delivery properly triages current mailing conditions and throttles back connection rates and throughput. By modulating connection and throughput rates, Adaptive Delivery respects ISP delivery requirements, Terms of Service (TOS), Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) and delivers according to their standards for maximum inbox placement. In addition to the baseline rule sets, Adaptive Delivery allows for the creation of custom rules and the setting of thresholds to optimally control unique mail streams. Real-Time Reporting Automated IP Warm-Up Real-time Traffic Shaping Proactive Threshold Management Automated Block Handling By making intelligent decisions based on real-world scenarios, and the ever-increasing tempo of a mobile marketplace, Adaptive Delivery acts as an internal postmaster functioning in partnership with the domains you re trying to deliver mail to. The system is capable of providing SMTP notifications to staff members when conditions are met that warrant human involvement. Delivery to any ISP is fluid and subject to a number of inputs, including the amount of other traffic an ISP is dealing with. Not every bounce or deferral requires immediate attention understanding the difference between normal delays and critical blocks is key to off-loading manual monitoring duties from already overloaded staff. This is an alert generated by the Adaptive Delivery Component. The alert pertains to: Domain: ymail.com Binding: Host: MTA1-marketing Trigger: [TS01] Messages from temporarily deferred ; seehttp://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/421-ts01.html Action: adjusting throttle down Notification of automated system action based on specific deferral event. Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation 7

11 The ESP Ramp Up Scenario Service Providers are a special case that greatly benefit from the automation built into Adaptive Delivery. In addition to notifications designed to keep deliverability personnel in the loop, Adaptive Delivery can handle the arduous task of IP warm up/ramp up. In today s world a new IP is automatically considered suspect by receiving domains until such time that the IP builds sufficient volume and a reputation. The challenge of building reputation has forced people to design complex ramp up schemas that build volume over time relative to total throughput, mail quality and generated complaints during the ramp. This requires constant monitoring, and the careful selection of mail and recipients most likely to have a positive impact to the IP s overall reputation. Adaptive Delivery assumes control of this Bulk Marketing Acquisition Programs LOW REPUTATION/ HIGHER RISK Newsletters Daily Updates Retention Marketing AVERAGE REPUTATION/ MODERATE RISK Reputation/Risk Continuum process by applying a formula based on its assessment of a given IP. Sophisticated internal controls are in place to restrict total throughput on new IPs, and take evasive action if complaints spike or if bounces come flooding back in. ESPs and mailers can Likely Results Alerts and Notices One-to-One Messages HIGH REPUTATION/ LOWER RISK add new IPs to their total outbound pool without having to sit down, manually throttle delivery, or design ramp up plans because Adaptive Delivery will recognize the new IPs and apply automated warm up to the IP s outbound traffic. Adaptive Delivery uses deferrals and other non-delivery scenarios to fine-tune delivery over the long term by making ongoing adjustments to the total throughput rate and number of connections established by IP. The automation of firefighting translates directly into better total delivery over the life of the IP and mailer. This scenario applies directly to both end mailers running their own delivery infrastructure, and ESPs sending on behalf of their clients. Adaptive Delivery allows mailers to segment traffic based on the quality of the mail stream, source, vintage and other dimensions that have a marked effect on the final disposition of the message. The Business Case For Improving Deliverability With Adaptive Delivery engagement begins with delivery must arrive to the inbox to start a conversation ending in a conversion. Cross-channel marketing and campaigns are on everyone s lips. Central to the cross-channel conversation is , the foundational channel of our multichannel world. By some estimates nearly 60% of all opens happen on a mobile device xii thereby validating the cross-platform, cross-channel nature of . The last decade was punctuated by concerns about images on vs. images off mobile devices have mostly made this a non-issue. The concern now, as was then, is how can I ensure my customers receive my s in their inbox? Optimizing and streamlining deliverability is a critical first step to supporting a true cross-channel marketing presence. Investing in automated systems that improve deliverability over the long-term is a necessary first step toward improving a brand s reputation and stickiness across channels. 8 Message Systems

12 Adaptive Delivery Drives Increased Revenue Increased Revenue without a.d. with a.d. Change Yearly Volume 240,000, ,000,000 Average Delivery Rate 83.0% 90.0% 7.0% Average Delivery Volume 192,000, ,000,000 Click Rate 8.5% 9.4% 0.9% Conversion Rate 1.0% 1.1% 0.1% xiii Average Sale Size $95.00 $95.00 Revenue per thousand delivered s $80.75 $97.71 Revenue per year $16,085,400 $21,104,820 $5,019,420 Locked in the solution to deliverability are real revenues. To understand the revenue potential from the automated application of best practices, we have to understand the scope of the problem. From the table you can see that an average delivery rate of 83% means that 1 in 5 recipients never had the opportunity to see your offer. Worse yet, delivery to the inbox and the spam folder look exactly the same! Of the 83% delivery rate, a good portion of those s arrive to a recipient s spam folder, meaning they may as well have never been delivered. Average hard bounce rates are 2%. xiv Hard bounces represent unrecoverable addresses lost to the closing of an account or improper input of that address. The remaining 15% are potentially deliverable addresses, each of which can turn into a real opportunity and conversion. Improvements in deliverability effect positive change in multiple ways: Undelivered , due to poor delivery architecture, logic or sending have a higher likelihood of arriving to the inbox through Adaptive Delivery automation. Increases in inbox placement translate into improved clicks and conversions. s delivered to a recipient s spam folder are more likely to change disposition to the inbox when senders begin to properly react and comply with ISP sending requirements, more in the inbox vs. the spam folder translates into higher clicks and conversions. We saw real, tangible and measurable results 30 days after we started using Adaptive Delivery: 6% increase to Outlook.com/Hotmail addresses, 4% lift in Yahoo!, 5% increase in Comcast deliverability and in certain edge cases a whopping 300% lift to AOL! Kiersti Esparza, Senior Delivery Strategy and Compliance Analyst, Marketo There Are No Guarantees! The revenue opportunity of undelivered is offset when you take into account the real cost of one or more deliverability personnel. The cost for staffing a deliverability team with one senior and one junior full-time employee can run upwards of $180,000 per year and there s no guarantee that throwing two bodies at the problem will yield the missing revenue. Take into account the tools that deliverability personnel require to achieve maximum efficiency, and your cost for recovering the money on the table jumps by $25,000-35,000+ per year. The cost of tools and personnel is nothing to the cost of brand damage through human error improperly triaging and responding to a single non-delivery event can result in millions of dollars of lost revenue for an organization. Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation 9

13 Delivery Success Across Industries and Channels The B2C Scenario. Adaptive Delivery is ideally suited to manage the multiple mail streams of large end mailers. Because global organizations play by different rules in different geographies, data sources can range wildly in quality. Adaptive Delivery, in conjunction with the Momentum suite, allows companies to create logical separations between different classes of mail. This helps ensure that regional policy is enforced while protecting the organization s overall brand and mailing reputation through automated monitoring of all outbound streams based on individual data quality. The B2B Scenario. Most B2B mailers don t realize that they have many of the same challenges delivering to mainstream, tier 1 ISPs (Mailbox Providers) as B2C mailers. Many organizations are relocating their traditional corporate mail server to the cloud and leveraging Gmail and other cloud technologies. The same challenges faced by a retailer advertising swimwear manifests on the B2B side. Adaptive Delivery is ideally suited to the B2B mailing world because of the depth of intelligence incorporated into monitoring and reacting to mailstreams regardless of audience. The ESP Scenario. The staggering volumes of generated by the world s leading service providers create unique staffing challenges. There aren t enough deliverability specialists in the world to monitor all the campaigns sent around the clock. Adaptive Delivery is the bridge between a) understanding and intelligently reacting to normal conditions and b) calling in the experts through automated notifications. It can be an invaluable tool in helping ESPs of all stripes keep their personnel costs in check while ensuring their customers are experiencing maximum inbox results and growing positive mailing reputations. Conclusion hasn t changed a great deal in the last 20 years, though the mobile revolution has increased our reliance and consumption of 8 in 10 cite as the most common activity on their mobile phones. xv It s now more important than ever to ensure that s reach their intended recipient. Our world runs on from receipts you generate to yourself at your bank s ATM, to highly targeted offers optimized for mobile devices, each of these unique scenarios requires that organizations resolve the 1 in 5 s that are routinely blocked or filtered to the spam folder. Today s dynamic organizations need to leverage technology that adapts, in real time, to changes and patterns during the course of mailing operations. Adaptive Delivery increases conversions by improving the deliverability of commercial and transactional . Organizations save money by ensuring that transactional mail, designed to automate customer service functions and mitigate call center volume, isn t lost. Brand stickiness is improved with every that arrives on target, to the recipient s inbox, ensuring that conversations lead to clicks that turn into real revenue through conversions. Every company stuck in the quagmire of phone calls to ISPs staffed by skeleton crews needs new tools for the new age the bat phone is dead, it never really existed, but deliverability automation is a reality and can make a measurable difference. 10 Message Systems

14 end notes i From the webinar Keys to Delivery Success: featuring Forrester, Message Systems & Marketo ii US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 Forrester Research: iii [ ] Deliverability is defined as the processes, tools, technology and specific knowledge required to increase the volume of delivered to a recipient s inbox vs. the spam folder, avoiding non-delivery due to blocking while ensuring best practices compliance. iv Based on the E-Consultancy Marketing Industry Census v Based on DMA findings from 2012: vi By way of CNN: citing a report by Custora from their blog: vii Based on multiple findings including the Return Path Benchmark Report: -Deliverability-Research-1H_20111.pdf and IBM Optimization , Mobile & Social Benchmark: com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=sa&subtype=st&htmlfid=zzi12449usen viii Based on Findings by Peter McGarahan (of Peter McGarahan & Associates) in a presentation on Reducing Support Costs Without Sacrificing Quality: Sacrificing_Service_Quality.pdf ix Internet volumes and benchmarks via Pingdom x AOL released the Report This as Spam button with AOL version 8 which debuted in & xi xii According to Movable Ink, almost 60% of all opens in March 2013 were on a smartphone. 34% of those were on an Apple device; 23% were on an Android. -Movable Ink Opens, March 2013 (2013) xiii The increase noted in this table is applicable to companies of average size. Small incremental lift in both CTR and Conversions can result in millions of dollars of found revenue for an organization. Improvements in deliverability are not reflected linearly in campaign efficacy. Most senders do not arrange segments to be sent out with the most active names first, followed by less active and then relatively inactive last all the while slowing down the pace of delivery to prevent rapid spikes in complaints and bounces. The truth of the matter is that most mailers mix their active and less active names delivery issues can affect the most active and likely converters. By increasing overall inbox placement gains in CTR and Conversions can very well exceed expectations and translate directly into greatly improved ROI. Average industry delivery rates include delivery to the inbox. By improving overall deliverability through automation and sending infrastructure, senders decrease the likelihood that s land in a customer s spam folder. A sender that takes measures to protect and improve their deliverability increases the chances that s are delivered to the inbox by properly reacting to inbound messages and throttling accordingly. xiv Based on the Epsilon Q1, 2013 Benchmark Study bounce rates, [defined as hard bounce rates] were 1.9% down from 3% in the same quarter the year before. xv is Top Activity on Smartphones, Ahead of Web Browsing & Facebook Improving Delivery & Reducing Costs Through Automation 11

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