Case Study: How ESPs Can Really Help Clients Improve Deliverability

When deliverability issues first began to surface back in 2003, many marketers turned immediately to their email service provider and said, essentially, “Hey, what gives? Why aren’t you getting my email to the inbox?”

The irony is that the vast majority of the causes of deliverability problems have nothing to do with the service provider. As I wrote back in December, any reputable vendor has the basic sending infrastructure in place that will meet the requirements of ISPs and other receivers. I have stated many times in the past, in the majority of cases the fate of your email program was determined at the point of data collection. Why is that? Three reasons:

1. People submit bogus email addresses or accounts they have no intention of using.
2. You don’t set expectations at the point of subscription with regard to content and frequency.
3. You don’t verify email address validity at the point of collection (for example, with a confirmation message)

All of these issues are the direct result of the marketer’s efforts, not those of the ESP.

When their clients are bad mailers, the ESPs’ deliverability rates fall. The problem was determining which marketers were causing problems for them. As with so many things in life, the majority of the problems happen because of a minority of clients. How do you find those few bad apples?

Today, that is easy if you know how the receivers view your clients. That is now possible through Sender Score Reputation Monitor, which our good partner eROI uses to its advantage. With the reputation data now at their fingertips, they can see which clients are headed in the wrong direction – and which prospective clients they need an intervention before signing on.

eROI uses this data primarily to educate and consult – to help the bad mailers become good ones and enjoy the increased response that comes from improved deliverability. Of course, if education fails, they can segregate their IPs so top-notch marketers don’t suffer because of other mailers misdeeds.

eROI also uses Sender Score Campaign Preview to help their clients with content assessments. Content is another area where ESPs typically have little control, so having a mechanism to help clients pinpoint where they need to make changes is crucial. Read more about how eROI uses the Sender Score suite to help its clients. And if you are struggling with deliverability issues, talk to your ESP about how they address these problems. Can they help you assess your content? Do they segregate high reputation mailers from low reputation ones to protect their deliverability? You can’t expect your ESP to solve the problems that you are causing in your program. But you can expect them to help you diagnose and solve your problems so that you can increase your email success.