One Major Email Deliverability Issue You Need to Monitor

Do you know your inbox placement rate (IPR)?

Email usage has remained solid for years, and its popularity will likely grow due to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. A new report from Nielsen shares that 40% of smartphone owners and 42% of tablet owners use their device while watching TV. What are people doing on these devices? 60% check their email during shows, while 59% wait for a commercial break to check their email.

And of course we can’t forget Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project’s statistics, which shared the information that 92% of online adults use email, with 61% using it daily.

The popularity is there, the usage is often, yet email delivery is not where many business owners, email marketers and online publishers would like it to be.

According to Return Path’s The Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, 1H 2011, on a global scale, 81% of all commercial email reaches the inbox. As for the email that does go to the recipient’s inbox, 12% is classified as “missing” – as the email gets blocked by ISP-level filtering – and 7% goes to spam filters.

Although North American rates are slightly better, with 86% of commercial email reaching the inbox, there is still much room for improvement.

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One major reason delivery is an issue for email marketers

It’s important to pay attention to your inbox placement rate (IPR), which is a metric that tells you the percentage of emails that reach the recipients’ inbox.

According to The Global Email Delivery Benchmark Report, there is a common bounce rate myth that exists within many email deliverability reports. Many systems report the number of messages sent, then subtract the number of hard bounces received. As the report states, “this means that unless your email was a hard bounce, you will not be notified if your email doesn’t reach the inbox.”

Monitoring your IPR will show you the percentage of emails that actually reach the inbox, which includes paying attention to spam and junk mail.

How to fix your delivery rate

It’s important to be proactive about your email endeavors. Just because you are generating revenue from email marketing campaigns, it doesn’t mean you aren’t missing out on more revenue. In fact, deliverability issues are serious because they equate to missed business opportunities.

In order to fix this issue, first take a look at the email you send. Did you properly whitelist before sending emails to your audience members? Are you using spam trigger words in your email subject lines? Do you have adequate opt out options for subscribers who no longer want to receive your email? Do you receive a lot of customer complaints about your emails? All of these issues can affect the deliverability of your emails.

Additional help can be found by utilizing third-party services that specifically take inbox placement rate into consideration.

For more information on the topic of email deliverability, download a free copy of Return Path’s The Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, check out Nielsen’s mobile devices statistics or Pew Internet & America Life Project’s data.