Email Marketing Deliverability * Email Marketing Deliverability Rates * Email Marketing Deliverability Rates Tutorial

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Email Marketing - Deliverability Rates
By Holly Hicks and Sissi Haner
Jan 25, 2006

1. The subject line is critical to whether the user will open your email.
A sample open rate of 23.3% is actually quite high.

2. Regardless of opt-in, unless the IP address or senders email address is white listed with the users ISP and/or personal spam filter software, the spam filters will nab the newsletter more often then not.

3. Several Hotels tend to use many words that will create a 98% chance that their newsletter will get stopped by spam filters. We try to use images when we can for helping the cause, and I suggest doing the newsletter in html and after approved, turn it into a screenshot and send as one or more compressed image(s). This will solve the issue of words that get stopped by spam filters.

Common words include: free, sexy, coupon, ticket, offer, contest etc.
See just few samples from a recently sent newsletter below. (Filtered words are in red)

Mark your calendar... On Friday, January 13th - Yes lucky 13 - we will announce the very lucky winner of our contest you have read about. So stay tuned to find out who will win our "Hotel Special Rate Package"...

San Francisco is on the menu and on sale from January 1 thru January 31. Many great restaurants are participating for lunch or dinner. Make a special weekend or just one night of it and reserve an overnight stay now!!!!.

A Head Start on February Savings... Now is the time to plan that special getaway to San Francisco in February. Check out the FABULOUS rates our Hotel has to offer!

4. Studies have proven that too much content and to many images, as well as a busy newsletter can be a negative factor for open rates. A simple and clean design with just one or maybe a few things to focus on should be the goal. If your newsletter looks overwhelming with too much to read, a user will:
a) save it for later and most likely delete it without it getting read
b) delete it immediately with the "I don't have time to read all this" theory.

5. Following up to segmented lists (targeted to click through users) is crucial to successful newsletter marketing.

Below are a few links for reference:

MarketingSherpa.com teleconference about email delivery
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/emailResults/

What's a typical open rate? A marketing professionals survey recently showed an industry open rate average of less than 20%, and many marketers report that open rates are declining. B2B open rates, however, are in the 37% rate with many B2B marketers reporting rates of 30% or higher.
http://www.optinnews.com/email_marketing_open_rates.html

Data collected by MarketingSherpa for its "Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006," reveals more marketers this year than last are reporting open rates of less than 20 percent.
http://www.silverpop.com/newsletters/digitalmarketer/fallingopens_12_05.html

This one is interesting - aweber provides which days newsletters are opened more.
http://www.aweber.com/news/newsletter_statistics_%20for_best_open_clickthru_and_delivery_rates_1250.htm