You're likely not surprised to hear that 90% of the email ISPs have to deal with is spam, which has driven them to constantly evolve and improve their filtering processes. Competition for users with mail accounts hasn't abated, meaning that the ISP that does the best job of keeping the inbox clean and relevant wins.
In a recent article at eM+C titled: "The Effect of Email Engagement on Inbox Delivery" I discuss the balancing act marketers need to deal with at major ISPs. In this article I mention: "For marketers, this means that gone are the days when you can email away willy-nilly while ignoring what’s happening on the other end. You need to monitor all of your campaigns for engagement, looking primarily for opens and clicks, which indicate that subscribers care about your email. If they don’t, over time the sum total of those ignoring you may outweigh the ones that are paying attention to you. If, in addition to this, some portion of your target audience continues to vote your email as spam, you could end up in the spam folder."
We have evidence showing that Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and AOL.com all monitor the engagement level of your email recipients as part of their email filtering algorithms. We've known for years that ISPs monitor user complaints, but now the implicit actions of your subscribers are just as important as the explicit actions. I like to think of the process as being a large scale used to distinguish the mail that recipients want from the mail that they don't want.
Al Iverson hit this in his recent blog titled, "The Rise of Emperor Engagement." In it he states, "If your mail is going to the bulk folder at a top ISP, it's probably going to be because recipients don't care about your email. They're not engaged."
The good news is that focusing on creating content and offers that your subscribers want will not only boost your deliverability, it will also boost your email revenues!
In a recent article at eM+C titled: "The Effect of Email Engagement on Inbox Delivery" I discuss the balancing act marketers need to deal with at major ISPs. In this article I mention: "For marketers, this means that gone are the days when you can email away willy-nilly while ignoring what’s happening on the other end. You need to monitor all of your campaigns for engagement, looking primarily for opens and clicks, which indicate that subscribers care about your email. If they don’t, over time the sum total of those ignoring you may outweigh the ones that are paying attention to you. If, in addition to this, some portion of your target audience continues to vote your email as spam, you could end up in the spam folder."
We have evidence showing that Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and AOL.com all monitor the engagement level of your email recipients as part of their email filtering algorithms. We've known for years that ISPs monitor user complaints, but now the implicit actions of your subscribers are just as important as the explicit actions. I like to think of the process as being a large scale used to distinguish the mail that recipients want from the mail that they don't want.
Al Iverson hit this in his recent blog titled, "The Rise of Emperor Engagement." In it he states, "If your mail is going to the bulk folder at a top ISP, it's probably going to be because recipients don't care about your email. They're not engaged."
The good news is that focusing on creating content and offers that your subscribers want will not only boost your deliverability, it will also boost your email revenues!
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