COLUMBIA, MD -- 08/07/07 --
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)
estimates that in 2007 U.S. marketers will spend $500 million on email
marketing to generate $21.9 billion in sales. That's an 18.3% increase in
email marketing expenditures over last year. The upward trend indicates
that marketers increased reliance on email marketing may stem from an
impressive return on investment.
According to Doug Berger, director of Member Communications for the Direct
Marketing Association, "For every dollar spent on email marketing in 2007,
marketers can expect an estimated $48.29 ROI. Without a doubt, email
marketing achieves the greatest ROI of all marketing channels we look at."
With the DMA's lucrative projected ROI on email marketing for 2007,
marketers are expected to increasingly rely on email for critical sales
promotions to attract the growing number of online shoppers, particularly
for the upcoming holiday season. A sharp increase in outbound messages over
normal activity can put a strain on a marketer's email system, resulting in
slower delivery. Further, a marketer's inability to comply with ISP
deliverability requirements can result in undelivered messages and strained
relationships.
With holiday marketing activities beginning as early as October, email
solution provider Message Systems' vice president of field operations,
Barry Abel, advises that now is the time for email marketers to take a hard
look at the effectiveness of their email delivery system and their
relationship with ISPs.
"Deliverability is vital to the overall success of an email campaign and
the bottom line is bounced messages equate to lost revenue," said Abel.
"Consider, for example, a company that sends 500,000 emails as part of a
targeted marketing campaign. Past campaign performance indicates that 100
of every 1,000 mail messages delivered to customer inboxes are opened and
that of these, three people purchase products at an average transaction
value of $25. Using these statistics, the retailer can expect the campaign
to generate $375,000 in revenue if all 500,000 messages are received.
However, if the deliverability rate slips to 80%, 100,000 messages are
undelivered, costing the retailer $75,000 in lost revenue. Repeat this
process on a wider scale over a year and the revenue loss is staggering. In
this case, every one percent of increased deliverability produces $3,750 in
additional revenue. That's why having an email delivery system that
consistently achieves high deliverability rates is so important to the
bottom line."
There are several things retailers can do to prepare their email delivery
system for the holiday season. Whether email campaigns are handled in-house
or outsourced to an email service provider (ESP), a high-performance email
solution with virtual IP capability, bounce automation, real-time
reporting, and tools to match ISP sending requirements are key
considerations for achieving high email delivery rates and maintaining a
good reputation with ISPs.
An email solution that allows each server to send millions of messages per
hour with ability to maintain 100k concurrent connections will scale to
send multiple campaigns simultaneously and provide the bandwidth to prevent
delays. Choosing an email infrastructure that allows marketers to segment
traffic by using unlimited IP addresses on a server provides fine-grain
control over outbound mail processing and contributes substantially to
improving deliverability.
Few marketers have email systems that monitor email delivery and process
bounced messages. Knowing if a message lands in an inbox, a junk folder or
was blocked by a spam catcher, provides the information a marketer needs to
make adjustments so more mail is delivered to the inboxes. Further, if bad
addresses are continuously used, this is an indication to ISPs that the
sender may be a spammer, which can result in blacklisting. Email solutions
that monitor and report on email deliverability and automatically eliminate
bad addresses improve overall deliverability and help preserve the
company's reputation with ISPs.
Some email systems also provide real-time analytics that also provide
immediate insights into the deliverability of each mailing. On-demand
reporting allows email marketers to make adjustments to improve
deliverability before subsequent campaigns are sent. Similarly, an email
solution that has workflow and policy management capability will alert
administrators of mail processing problems when they happen, so that
corrections can be made immediately.
Finally, maintaining a good reputation is critical to timely email
deliverability. ISPs are fighting spam, phishing attacks and viruses daily.
To prevent illegitimate mail from reaching their customers, they are
tightening the requirements for senders. There a number of things
legitimate marketers can do to establish and maintain a good reputation
with ISPs. These include adopting authentication technology such as DKIM or
Sender ID, sending to clean mailing lists and using an email delivery
system that can vary the speed of message delivery to avoid overburdening
ISPs that have implemented throttling. It is important to either establish
an in-house ISP relations team or to contract with a third-party reputation
service to keep up with changing ISP requirements.
"With the holiday season fast approaching, any retailer who wants to drive
sales through email would be wise to evaluate their email delivery system
now and make the necessary adjustments to handle the projected volumes
generated by 4Q campaigns," said Abel.
About Message Systems
Founded in 1997, Message Systems is a worldwide provider of email software
solutions and services for email service providers (ESPs), Internet service
providers (ISPs) and large enterprises that need to manage the delivery of
large amounts of business-critical email. Through a combination of
technology, partnerships and intellectual capital, Message Systems offers a
family of software solutions and services that address the email
infrastructure and deliverability needs for organizations ranging from
regional businesses to the Global 2000. With the most powerful Message
Transfer Agent (MTA) on the market supporting more than 100,000 concurrent
connections per server, Message Systems gets millions of unique messages to
the right place at the right time. Headquartered in Columbia, Maryland,
Message Systems has a network of channel partners in North America, Europe
and Asia. For more information, go to www.messagesystems.com.
Contact:
Marcy Theobald
Carabiner Communications
678-860-3639
mtheobald@carabinerpr.com
