PANEL: Best Practices in Email Deliverability

PANEL: Best Practices in Email Deliverability

Moderator: W. Jeffrey Rice, Research Analyst MarketingSherpa Panelists: Austin Bliss, President FreshAddress, Inc. Jack Hogan, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder LifeScript, Inc. Tom Sather, Director, Professional Services Return Path Amit Singh, Specialist, Consumer Marketing Technologies Nestle USA

Case Study: How LifeScript utilizes email hygiene to maintain a healthy database Jack Hogan CTO & Co-Founder LifeScript, Inc.

Case Study Background The company: LifeScript The marketplace: Online women s health websites The product: LifeScript.com the fourth-largest health site and tenth-largest women's online community The focus: Email marketing database The objective: To keep faulty data from entering LifeScript s marketing database

Case Study Background LifeScript is the only website focusing exclusively on women s health, using a voice that resonates with its core audience 5+ million readers subscribe to its six daily email newsletters: o o o o o o Healthy Advantage Diet & Fitness Daily Reflections Daily Horoscope Diabetes Healthy Appetite 30MM website visitors every month

Case Study Background Consumers must provide LifeScript with their email address to receive any of the six daily newsletters

The Challenge Consumers were entering typos and invalid and bogus email addresses Undelivered emails were going to The Twilight Zone Problematic email addresses were: o hurting overall email deliverability o damaging sender reputation o thwarting ability to communicate with potential readers o preventing LifeScript s advertisers from receiving the maximum number of impressions

The Challenge Identify bad email addresses Found that bad email addresses are typed 2 20% of the time! Syntax Spelling Transposition Missing Characters Extra Characters idohair54 ldross@sbcglobal,net donespinoza@verison.net nenosam7@hotmale.com s_cruz59@hotmail.ocm nuziad42@earhtlink.net zephirin@earthlin.net george52@mindsping.com shannonkemble@yahhoo.com Dyuengling@aol..com Keystroking mrstacook_cna@yahoolcom sntower2aol.com

The Challenge Identify bogus. adsf@asdf.com NONE@GMAIL.COM meyou@nowhere.com trash@hotmail.com no@nothanks.com and malicious emails abuse@bankofamerica.com aliciacolours@yahoo.com dude22@dodgeit.com Reid589@airmessage.net rjtaylor@mediaone.net

LifeScript s Goal To keep faulty email addresses out of the marketing database Retain maximum number of collected email addresses by correcting inadvertent or deliberate consumer entry errors

Strategy and Tactics Implement a comprehensive email hygiene and correction service o o o o Simple rules checking PLUS Filter against known bad, bogus and blocked addresses and FCC block list Correct misspellings of domains Verify presence of mail server (a.k.a. MX check)

Strategy & Tactics 1. LifeScript s server Email Hygiene Vendor s Real-time servers

Strategy & Tactics Actual errors in LifeScript s file caught and corrected A customer s mistake results in LifeScript s broken promise ahkeemdhobby@gamil.com pmitch3161@hotmail.comh poop@nopoop.com reahaelo@guerrillamailblock.com shooterlongrange@ahoo.com stop@null.net torchiaf@bllsouth.net wcmcla@comcasat.net yourdumbestnightmare@bugmenot.com

Results Monthly reports on activity and filtering

Results 26 million emails checked over the past two years More than 345,000 invalid email addresses were caught 49.3% of those were corrected using email hygiene

Summary and Key Takeaways Utilizing email hygiene and correction results in: o LifeScript delivering more impressions to online advertisers o Minimized email deliverability issues for all concerned avoids blacklisting o o Keeps LifeScript in daily contact with subscribers Optimizes LifeScript s and its advertisers marketing ROI

Credits LifeScript: o Jack Hogan, CTO & Co-Founder Email hygiene vendor: o Austin Bliss, President & Co-Founder For more information and white papers on email deliverability, please go to: http://www.freshaddress.com/whitepapers/

Commentary from Expert Panelists

Case Study: How to Hit (and Know You've Hit) the Target - Incorporating Deliverability into Email Best Practices Amit Singh Consumer Marketing Technologies Specialist Nestlé USA

Case Study Background The company: Nestlé USA The marketplace: B2C email campaigns for the CPG market The platform: Unica Pivotal Veracity (PV) - Email delivery and content optimization tool The channel: Email campaigns to subscribed consumers across Nestlé USA brands The objective: To improve email deliverability of email campaigns to consumer inboxes.

Case Study Background Challenges we faced Email delivery engine hosted and maintained by Nestlé USA Responsible for our own Domain and IP reputations Keeping consumers engaged and holding on to them o CPG Branding/Relationship messages vs. E-commerce/Transactional messages

Case Study Background Challenges we faced Manual Process o Email accounts created at all the regular ESPs/ISPs o Previews sent to these accounts Multiple Interactive agencies for multiple brands o Creating Content o Running Campaigns Blocked by ISPs fairly regularly No insight into email delivery to inbox vs. spam folder at campaign run time Difficult process to troubleshoot missing/bounced emails

The Goal The team s objective was to improve email deliverability and get better insight into placement of Nestlé USA emails to the inbox. The Challenge The existing process was completely manual and time consuming. For the large number of campaigns going out every day from the system it was tough to keep track of the deliverability.

Strategy & Tactics Using vendor tool Put in custom weighting based on Nestlé consumers domains. Custom weighting being inserted

Strategy and Tactics Monitor delivery dashboard on a daily basis Identify campaigns with delivery issues

Strategy and Tactics Drill into campaigns with delivery issues Focus on the problem areas

Strategy and Tactics Troubleshoot the campaign Email placement in spam folder! Work with vendor s other tools to identify issues with the content/design that is likely to trigger spam folder placement. Emails are missing! Analyze logs to identify any error codes or reasons for the bounce. Work with vendor s resolution tool to contact the ISP/ESP and resolve the delivery issue.

Results Since implementation of the new processes Metric Change % Increase Emails sent 102.9% Email campaigns run 63.2% Emails sent/campaign 24.6% Unique consumers targeted 23.1% Avg. emails sent per consumer 61.7%

Results Delivered Before 92.6% After 96.7% 4.4% IN EMAIL DELIVERY Bounced Before 4.77% After 2.39% 99.8% IN EMAIL BOUNCES Email sends to consumer increased 102.9% over the same timeframe.

Summary & Key Takeaways Using a deliverability tool significantly enhanced inbox delivery for email campaigns and reduced spam folder placement and ISP/ESP blocks. Shaped Nestlé Best Practices for Email Campaigns to incorporate the deliverability tool within the email campaign creation lifecycle. All Nestlé USA campaigns that go out to more than 50K consumers need to be delivery tested using PV and achieve over 95% weighted score in the PV delivery dashboard. It is optional but recommended for smaller lists. Monitoring, tracking and resolution were all simplified and became proactive rather than reactive.

Commentary from Expert Panelists

Question-and-Answer Session