Email Address Quality –
What Does It Mean To Be Clean?
Speakers:
 Austin Bliss, FreshAddress
 Sal Tripi, Publishers Clearing House
October 22nd, 2015
We hope you enjoy today’s webinar. The speakers’ presentations and comments represent
their own viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views of the DMA or eec.
Presented by:
Austin Bliss
President & Co-Founder
Sal Tripi
Assistant Vice President, Digital
Operations and Compliance
Publishers Clearing House
Agenda
Email Address Quality:
1. Threats
•
•
Address-level
List use / management
2. Costs
3. Solutions
THREATS
Threats To Email Address Quality…
Two types of threats:
A. Problems within your email address list
B. The ways you use your list
Undeliverable Addresses
Lots of causes
• Malformed (e.g. missing @-sign, .com, etc.)
• Keystroking error (misspelling, etc.)
• Data handling (truncation, etc.)
• Nonsense typing
Fortunately, easy to ID & scrub out.
• Address validation
• Deploy an email
1st
Deliverable but… typo
2nd
[email protected] (instead of [email protected])
There are an alarming number of typo domains that are
deliverable or pass email validation…
Deliverable… but bogus
3rd
Bogus addresses are worthless to you, but many pass simple
validation…
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
Deliverable but… disposable
4th
When users don’t want to give you their ‘real’ email address,
they turn to a disposable provider…
…at FreshAddress, we track over 1,700 disposable domains.
Deliverable but… role account
• Info@
• Billing@
• Admin@
• Jobs@
• Abuse@
Etc.
5th
Deliverable but… spamtrap
• used to ID spammers
• incoming email messages monitored by
humans or automation
• address may look innocent
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
ANYTHING sent to a spamtrap
is considered spam
6th
Good Addresses Can Go Bad
A healthy deliverable address can change to a:
• Undeliverable
• Problematic address (FCC wireless, EMPS, complainer)
• Spamtrap
November 2014 –
MX server for the
domain is pointed
to a spamtrap
provider
July 2014 –
Client has good
email addy
November 2014 –
December 2014 –
Email domain is
marked for
renewal at
registrar
Client received
blacklisting
Address Quality – bottom line
•
Email addresses that are undeliverable are
worthless
•
Even deliverable email addresses can be
worthless (or worse yet, cost you money!)
•
•
Typos, bogus, disposable, role accts &
spamtraps.
Good addresses can go bad
This isn’t a numbers game…
a single bad email address can cause a HUGE problem
List Management is NOT easy
Threats
Mail Deeper
Common List Management Mistakes
• Old acquisition practices of previous marketers
• Suppression and bounce list management issues
• Long period of time without emailing
• No routine list hygiene
• Lack of Monitoring
Poisioning
Spammers figure out a spamtrap address
Maliciously register it with legitimate marketers
Discredits the spamtrap or at least broadens the ‘fight’ against
the spamtrap provider.
COSTS
Wasted Budget
• Impact on Delivery for Bad Addresses
• Spending on ESP
• Spending on acquisition of email addys that aren’t good
• Liability of carrying old, unresponsive email addresses
Impact of Poor Hygiene
Delivery is tough (Inbox vs. Spam Folder)
It is no longer a mystery
• Bounce
• Complainers
• Engagement
Monitoring is critical
Delivery Issues
Folks aren’t getting the emails they requested or want
• Marketing Promotions
• Confirmations
• Billing Statements
May go to competitor
May just be annoyed
May complain / call customer support
Sample Calculation
If weekly mailings to 1million names yield $100k revenue every week,
over one year…
Unmanaged:
$5,200,000 revenue =$1.70 revenue generated per dollar spent
$3,052,000 costs
Managed (focus on address quality)
$6,568,000 revenue =$2.87 revenue generated per dollar spent
$2,289,000 costs
Assumptions:
$1cpm to mail
$3 each for acquisition
25% of acquired is bad/problematic. If cleaned up, inbox placement increases from 76% (industry std.) to 96%.
Worst Case
Blacklisted
Kicked off ESP
Lose ability to send any email
Real Life Confessions of an Email Marketer
What did I do wrong?
Lack of Controls
• Suppression list was an exclude – as opposed to a flag
• Dormant records were left on database
• Poor validation
SOLUTIONS
Solutions To Maintaining Your Email Address
Quality…
1. Improve acquisition practices
2. Develop an internal ‘quality standard’
3. Align everything to your standard
Customer keystroked – design errors
avg 22 char. 80% under 28 char.
Customer keystroked
Employee keystroked
Employee keystroked
All Keystroking Needs Address Validation
[email protected]
•
Utilize an address validation API to filter out undeliverable
addresses
•
Some services can even flag problematic (but deliverable!)
addresses and correct typos
Third-party
Address Quality – Develop A Standard
1. Come up with your own internal definition of a
quality email address
•
•
Deliverable
Not problematic
2. Implement screening organization-wide
3. Align all measurements and incentives to
that standard
Acquisition – Screen Everything
Routine Maintenance
Lots of Monitoring Service Options
October 22, 2015 | Page: 39
ROLL UP
Summary
Email Address Quality:
1. Threats
•
•
Address-level
List use / management
2. Costs
3. Solutions
Remember – Everything Needs Attention
Point of Acquisition:
Any time you are adding an email address to your file, it should be held to
quality standards
Ongoing List Maintenance:
Because email addresses degrade over time, ALL LISTS ARE AT RISK
Even those with ‘perfect’ double-optin practices can have future quality
problems with their list.
Utilize Third Party Expertise!
Questions??
Austin Bliss
President & Co
Co-Founder
Sal Tripi
Assistant Vice President, Digital
Operations and Compliance
Publishers Clearing House
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