Did you know that during the summer of 2012, several Emailing Service Providers (ESPs = routing platforms) experienced deliverability and delivery difficulties to several of the major ISPs?
A bit of a stretch for e-mailing professionals? not so much. Here's why:
What changes during the summer?
#1 a decrease in share rates
A reminder is necessary: the action rates on your messages -among others- allow ISPs to analyze the quality of your e-mailing program. Through powerful algorithms, Gmail, Microsoft, Orange & Co. can determine if your e-mail is legitimate to be delivered to its recipients.
During the summer, these decreasing rates imply a degraded perception of your messages by these anti-spam systems.
#2 a changing email flow
During the summer, the strategies diverge: some advertisers will do less e-mailing (often the "best" advertisers, with the most successful strategy and the best performances), or even suspend the e-mailing activity; others will compensate for the drop in performance by routing more campaigns (rather the performance e-mailers with a qualitatively weaker e-mail flow).
These changes: fewer good quality streams, more medium quality streams; are mechanically perceived by ISPs as an overall decrease in quality.
#3 the "return from vacation" phenomenon
You probably read your emails daily while on vacation. Do your customers do the same? Who has never found 200 e-mails in his mailbox when he came back from vacation?
Few of your contacts like to surf on a tidal wave of emails. Some will delete all these messages in 3 clicks, or worse, will opt for the radical solution: "report as spam".
When a message is deleted without being opened, or when it causes a spam complaint, this is relatively bad. When your recipients report 10 of your mails as spam on the same day, that's very bad.
What is the short-term impact on your reputation with ISPs?
These 3 phenomena (lower action rate, lower quality of the email flow, peaks of email deletions and complaints), results in a deterioration of your ESP's reputation with the ISPs:
- Your reputation, if you operate a dedicated environment (dedicated domain and IP): you will be the only one impacted, but you will also be completely responsible for the situation.
- That of your ESP, if you operate a shared or "semi-dedicated" environment (dedicated domain, shared IP): all users of this routing environment will be impacted, the responsibility being shared between the different operators.
Some tips to anticipate the crisis like a boss
#1 adapt your marketing pressure
Overall, reduce the number of people in the room. Focus on maintaining contact rather than being present during the period.
If you are bound by a contract that requires you to send a minimum number of emails per month, switch to ESP.
If your account manager contacts you every week to encourage you to get back on track, change ESP.
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#2 take into account user behavior
Target fewer contacts, only those who have been active since May (general case) and during the sales period (e-tailers). You can take advantage of the back-to-school period to contact the others.
When your customers want to inform you of their vacations with an absence message, make the effort to take this into account! Suspend the sending of e-mails for 3 weeks after receiving a notice of absence.
#3 Choose the ESP that provides the best routing conditions for your business
Badsender recently described how choose an e-mailing service provider and will soon publish a white paper on choosing a routing platform.
Here are some criteria for choosing a routing partner based on deliverability criteria:
- Can it provide dedicated IPs? - if you have sufficient volume and a regular e-mailing plan
- Are its shared IPs reputable enough? to avoid any risk of having your emails blocked by an ISP during your contract. For this, investigate the type of customers who use these IP ranges. Beware of preconceived ideas: the "great" references are not necessarily the best e-mailers! Ideally, test a few mailings before committing yourself.
- And of course, is the ESP able to assist you in choosing the best option?
If you think that you are not able to analyze and solve a problem of bad deliverability yourself, make sure :
- That a staff is available to assist you in this process
- That you can benefit from a personalized contact or consulting service for deliverability, especially if your e-mailing is strategic or a revenue center
(Failing that, budget for an e-mailing consultant like badsender.com, in addition to your routing costs!)
#4 integrate the cost of churn into your business indicators
The churn in e-mailing measures the loss of subscribers (unsubscribes, spam complaints, contacts becoming inactive).
The idea is to privilege the durability of your e-mail marketing actions by relaxing the activity during the summer, the value of your customers in the long term being too important to compromise it by a summer zeal:
- Calculate the benefits of preserving your customers for the better business periods, by generating less churn in July and August
- Calculate the interest of preserving a good deliverability for the fall, by adapting your e-mailing plan to the period.
Bonus! #5 score points with your contacts
E-merchant, apart from the traditional birthday email, have you ever sent a single disinterested email to your customers? When a customer notifies you of his absence for vacations, in addition to temporarily suspending his subscription, wish him a good rest, a mild weather, suggest him to stay in touch via twitter, send you a picture of the top of the Himalayas with the pair of boots he just ordered... in short, be imaginative, and turn this slack period into an opportunity!
(If some doubt that automating this process is possible, it is).
Similar difficulties can occur this summer with the ESPs, because the constraints are ultimately more related to the activity of their customers than to their technical management of the e-mailing flow. This problem must therefore be addressed in collaboration between platforms and customers, via information and awareness of this particular period.
PS. We should know soon enough, as the real low point in activity is early August. Watch your spam box!
