Last year in South Africa 500 million Rand was spent on email and digital direct marketing (Estimate from DMA SA). According to the “Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, 2H 2009” study done by Return Path (for the US, Europe and Asia regions) between 14% and 20% of email marketing messages never make it to the inbox. If that international trend holds in South Africa as well, then many millions of Rands are wasted on non-delivered messages each year.
The challenge of getting messages through to your subscriber’s inboxes is crucial to achieving the expected ROI. This paper will present the key issues that affect deliverability and suggest steps that can be taken to ensure that one’s company has the best email deliverability possible.
The low cost and high returns of email marketing are making it a more and more important part of the marketing mix. However, there are still many companies whose email strategy is characterized by high frequency, low value and lack of segmentation. This has partially been fuelled by the relaxed legislative environment surrounding direct and electronic marketing in South Africa. This is changing fast. Never before has one industry been affected by so many new laws, making today’s best practices tomorrow’s required practices.
Achieving optimal returns from an email marketing program depends to a large extent on deliverability – getting messages through to the recipient’s inbox. Deliverability ignores local legislation and is affected by a number of technical factors based on international standards. The single most important factor affecting deliverability is the sender’s reputation. This digital sender reputation is based on the mailing practices of the sender and feedback from the mail recipients.
This paper will present the key issues that affect deliverability and suggest steps that can be taken to ensure that one’s company has the best email deliverability possible.