The Email Wars

Many marketers are starting to understand just how important delivery is when using email as a vehicle. With the flood of spam blocking and filtering systems on the consumer and corporate markets, we are actually seeing more false positives and bouncing of legitimate emails sent from opt in lists.

So if all of these marketers know there is a problem and a challenge.. what actions will they take to turn the tide. I assume most of them will not take any actions, but complain that something needs to be done. In reality if you are to employ the best practices like senderID, Domain Keys, Whitelisted IPs, double opt in, sending from the same address each time, working to segment lists based on past behavoirs, etc, they would see much better results. But alas, all of this takes time and every marketer seems to have a lack of time.

Delivery Dilemma

Forget about subject lines, creative executions and test offers. The thing that concerns e-mail marketers most is deliverability. Will the message get through?

In a survey of its customers, Socketware, a provider of e-mail solutions, found that 84% of the companies polled had increased the volume of e-mail marketing campaigns over the past year.

“Companies are recognizing e-mail as a fundamental piece of their overall marketing strategy,” said Michael Pridemore, CEO of Socketware.

But there is a problem.

The survey also found that 68% of respondents were worried about e-mail deliverability issues. Concerns about e-mail filters and ISP blocking topped the list.

The concern over deliverability was also expressed earlier this year in a JupiterResearch survey, which found that the problem represented the number one challenge to e-mail marketers.

In fact, fully one-quarter of US marketers believe that 15% or more of their e-mails never reach recipients because the messages are interpreted as spam, according to a MarketingProfs.com survey.