As it does every year, ReturnPath publishes its deliverability barometer and analyzes the placement rate of legitimate email campaigns in the inbox. Remember that this study is based exclusively on legitimate commercial emails and is therefore representative of the deliverability levels that responsible advertisers can expect.
An overall downward trend
Globally, the number of emails delivered to the inbox is down when compared to 2014 figures. Only 79% of the commercial emails analyzed were placed in inboxes compared to 21% that are in spam boxes or simply not delivered. This is a decrease of 4% compared to 2014.
Results down everywhere, except in Brazil and to a lesser extent in Italy
The most dramatic drop comes from the U.S., where the rate of emails delivered to inboxes drops from 87% in 2014 to just 76% in 2015... less than the global average. Canada, which is traditionally worse than the U.S., also drops, but moves above its neighbor with 79% of emails delivered to the main box.
While not joining the other countries, the only significant increase can be credited to Brazil. Traditionally a laggard in terms of email deliverability (only 60% of emails delivered to inboxes in 2014), it seems that Brazil is on the right track to join the Western countries. It is often noted that the deliverability rate is directly related to the marketing maturity of a market and its more or less permissive privacy legislation. So it seems that Brazil is on the right track.
In Europe, there is nothing to celebrate. Apart from Italy, which is up by two points, and Spain, which has maintained its status quo, the German, British and French markets are down.
In France we therefore go from 84% of email delivered to inboxes in 2014 to 76%, a drop of 6 points.
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By sector, fashion, health, beauty and restaurants fare best
If we analyze deliverability by industry, we realize that it is once again the marketing maturity that greatly influences deliverability. The sectors in which brands invest the most in data quality and CRM techniques are obviously the ones that fare best. This is the case for the fashion sector, for health and beauty, for retail or even for the automotive sector.
On the contrary, and not surprisingly, the media and press sector is one of the sectors that have the most difficulties with their deliverability. In a sector that seeks to monetize every single data in its database, this is not really surprising.
Why these drops? A strengthening of the filtering of the ISPs/Webmails
This is a topic that has already been discussed at length on Badsender, webmail is strategic for the large internet portals. If they want to keep their market share, they have to make their email solutions as efficient as possible for their users. And in many cases, correct spam and graymail filtering is a decisive advantage in the consumer's choice.
ISPs and Webmails are therefore constantly improving the performance of their spam filters in order to satisfy their users. Brands that do not manage to properly engage their recipients are therefore sanctioned, even if they fully comply with the legislation.
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