The number of emails reaching the inbox is rapidly decreasing and consequently, email marketers are continuing to pour money down the drain, according to a new report.
The study, from email certification firm Return Path, shows that in the EMEA region (Europe Middle East and Africa) 15% of email never reached the inbox while in the UK, the figure was higher at 17%.
The study found that more stringent ISP filtering, increased email volumes and deteriorating sender reputations are making it harder than ever for UK marketers to get into the inbox.
The study found that inbox placement rates (IPR) declined sharply in the second half of 2011, according to the company’s most recent Global Email Deliverability Benchmark report.
For the first time in three years, Return Path has seen a major decline in email deliverability of 6% in the second half of 2011, bringing inbox placement rates to a record low of 76.5% globally.
Whilst the UK was slightly higher with 83% of emails reaching the inbox, with email delivered to the spam folder increased to 7% and missing or blocked email accounted for 10% of all UK email sent, this figure still represents a decline when compared to the first half of 2011.
While deliverability rates vary by region, Return Path research points to more stringent ISP filtering and blocking, deteriorating sender reputations and email overload as accounting for the historic decline.
Return Path’s report also examines email deliverability across vertical industries, B2B and for Gmail’s Priority inbox.
Key regional findings
In the global landscape, North American (NOAM) inbox rates experienced significant declines with an 8% drop, bringing in inbox placement rates closer to 79%.
The Asia-Pacific region’s deliverability rates still lag, and declined further in the second half of 2011, beating Central and Latin America for the worst placement rates.
The Asia-Pacific region saw inbox placement rates decline by 14% with only 67% of all mail reaching its intended inbox destination, whilst in Central and Latin America, only 72% of emails made it to the inbox.
In EMEA, for the second half of 2011, 15% of email never reached the inbox, with the majority of these (10%) being blocked by the ISP and 5% being identified as spam.
Regional champions include France (91%) and Italy (90%), while Spain was the lowest in the region, with only 77% of email reaching the inbox.
There are still significant opportunities to improve IPR and revenue from the email channel for most organisations.
For the first time, deliverability by popular industry types and region has also been included to show the possible impact that various commercial sectors may have on deliverability. In EMEA, the Online Gaming sector suffered from the lowest deliverability with only 73% of email arriving in the inbox, dipping to 71% in the UK.
“Despite EMEA leading deliverability worldwide, the report clearly shows that marketers are seeing the sharpest decline in inbox placement rates since the report was launched in 2004,” said Richard Gibson, Director, Client Services, Northern Europe at Return Path. “From working with our customers, we can see an increase in awareness of the link between inbox placement rates and email marketing performance. That said, there are undoubtedly still considerable issues with email deliverability. Marketers must make the required changes to improve deliverability and address these issues head on, or risk significant implications for marketing ROI and company revenues.”
“The findings from our benchmark report show the effects of a perfect storm,” said Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path. “Clients are having difficulty in getting their emails delivered, ISPs are tightening requirements on reputation metrics and the number of companies using email to market continues to increase – we see both higher overall email volume and an influx of relatively unsophisticated senders – resulting in decreased inbox placement rates.”
Key Reasons for Decline
According to the study, reasons for the significant decline in IPR include ISPs raising the bar on reputation metrics, making it harder than ever for marketers to get into the inbox. ISPs are using metrics that are generally unavailable to marketers through traditional deployment platforms and leveraging new data to determine spam from legitimate email. These metrics include engagement data, subscriber panel complaint data, and trusted subscriber data making deliverability extremely challenging for marketers not using data monitoring tools. Marketing metrics are also sliding in the wrong direction whether due to slashed marketing budgets, new staffing or reliance on third party ESPs for reputation monitoring. A third major reason for declining IPR is that consumers are overloaded, especially during the busy holiday period. Many consumers enthusiastically sign up for new emails, whether to access special deals, get interesting content or as part of a purchase process. When the emails arrive in the inbox the amount appears overwhelming, with consumers using the “report junk” button to unsubscribe from excess emails to cope with the avalanche.
Overcoming Deliverability Challenges
While the second half of 2011 proved to be challenging for most every region and across several industries, marketers taking proactive steps to improve deliverability have major opportunities to increase their revenue through the email channel.
“When marketers focus on improving their program’s deliverability, they do,” adds Blumberg. “100% deliverability is attainable. We know, because we’ve helped thousands of companies significantly increase their inbox placement rates. Opportunity is there for all smart marketers to beat their competitors by monitoring their reputation, understanding deliverability data and staying ahead of the deliverability curve. ”
Fewer Marketing Messages Make it to the Gmail Priority Inbox
In addition to conducting the Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, Return Path analysed a panel sample of over 40,000 Gmail mailboxes and over 110 million messages from July 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011. 93% of all Gmail subscribers now have priority inbox enabled, up 15% from Return Path’s previous study but Gmail inbox placement rates declined to 79% with 21% of mail being delivered to the spam folder and out of the 79% of mail delivered to the inbox, only 8% were marked priority, a 54% decline compared to Return Path’s previous study.
Report Methodology
Return Path conducted this study by monitoring data from its Mailbox Monitor service for campaigns conducted from July to December 2011. This study tracks the delivery, blocking and filtering rates for more than 1.1 million campaigns that used the Mailbox Monitor seed list system. For each campaign, Return Path recorded whether the email was missing, received in the inbox or filtered to the junk/spam folder (for those ISPs that use such a folder). For this report Return Path reviewed data from 142 ISPs in North America, Central and Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Asia Pacific territories from July to December 2011.
Download the study now.
