Comment | Letters: Best practice is needed to ensure email delivery - NMA

Comment | Letters: Best practice is needed to ensure email delivery - NMA: "Letters: Best practice is needed to ensure email delivery

Letters: Best practice is needed to ensure email delivery

Platform: None | Author: Mike Weston, MD EMEA, Silverpop | Source: NMA magazine | Published: 14.02.08

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The quarterly National Email Benchmarking Report is a useful tool for stirring debate but I often think the results hide more than they reveal. This quarter's report says that email delivery rates fell by 68% for customer acquisition and 80% for retention. I guess it depends who you're counting: one well-known online fashion etailer we work with is seeing a 99.5% delivery rate.

The only way to truly benchmark your current deliverability is against your past record. Averages of a moveable...

It's not as if overall volume of emails has grown - that has actually declined slightly - so perhaps, while ISPs and consumers have become more savvy about how they filter email, those sending them aren't moving at the same pace. Trends across our pool of customers continue to show that, over time, email marketers who embrace best practice tend to maintain much higher deliverability rates.

There will be blips as one or other ISP or email gatekeeper changes the rules, but these should be dealt with as they arise and, assuming best practice, the deliverability rates should return to their previous levels.