Mar
12
By: Brian Westnedge
Regional Director, Channels
Next Wednesday, March 17, 2010 our own resident email education expert, Stephanie Miller, will be participating in a webinar with one of our valued ESP partners, WhatCounts. This important webinar will address five specific factors helping email marketers today dramatically increase deliverability and results from their email campaigns. As inboxes become flooded and the email marketing environment changes, it is always important for marketers to stay up to date on trends and modify strategies. If you are interested in attending this webinar, sign up today.
Tell me moreCategories: News
Mar
11
By Angela Baldonero
SVP, People
The email universe is vast and complicated and populated by a diverse group of stakeholders, some good and some bad. The bad guys are of course the spammers and other illegitimate senders who seek to defraud consumers with phishing, spoofing and other scams. Luckily there are a lot of good guys fighting back to protect email for everyone.
THE MISSION
Why is this so important? Email continues to be the most popular and widely used Internet technology by all age groups and any other demographic you can think of. Email is an essential communication tool for all businesses no matter the industry or product. And despite the advent of new technologies that predict the death of email, email will never die. In fact, it's the fuel that drives these new technologies. Did you know that email is engine that powers the world of social media and soon Google Wave? So keeping all aspects of the email universe running smoothly is a critically important task - and Return Path is proud to be at the center of it.
THE ASSIGNMENT
We're incredibly busy working on both sides of inbox by providing large-volume senders with the reputation services they need to achieve high inbox placement. Plus, we offer ISPs and other large receivers access to the data and tools they need to make faster, more accurate filtering decisions. As we work to improve and perfect our current product suite, we'll be introducing new products and services to make email even more powerful - and valuable. It's a lot of work providing senders and receivers with the best technology, data and services in the email universe so we're hiring!
ARE YOU READY?
Have you been working in the email industry for a while? For an ESP or an ISP or a marketer? Are you passionate about keeping the channel safe for consumers and legitimate businesses? Do you want to work with people who are just as passionate about email? Would you like to work for a company that was recently named one of the best places to work? If you can answer "yes" to any of these questions, we'd love to talk to you. Check out our careers page to learn more about open positions.
Categories: News
Mar
10
By Jeremy Goldsmith
Software Engineering Manager
Several months ago, Google released Google Wave, which was described as the next big thing in online communication. An online collaboration tool, it was heralded by techno-pundits as a replacement for email, instant messaging and social networking. Even Google hinted that the current mix of technologies that people use for online communication (email, instant messaging and social networking) is outdated and ready for a new paradigm. ...
Tell me moreCategories: News
Feb
25
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
Gene Raitt, Chairman of the DMA, has launched a new blog today called DM Unplugged. It's not an official DMA property. Gene won't be the only contributor -- over time, other DMA board members (including me) and thought leaders in the direct and interactive marketing communities at large -- will contribute as well.
This is one small, though notable, development in a series of things the DMA is working on as it transforms itself. Look for some truly "unplugged" commentary on this blog about both things happening in the industry and transparent views into things happening at the DMA as well as invitations to contribute to the discussion on both.
Tell me moreCategories: News
Feb
03
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
The recently released Return Path Deliverability Benchmark report revealed that email deliverability problems plague marketers across the globe. European marketers, with an 85% inbox rate (messages delivered to subscribers' inboxes) are slightly better off than their colleagues in North America who only make it to the inbox 80% of the time. Europeans are a bit worse off than their counter-parts in Asia-Pacific who get delivered 86% of the time.
Here are some key findings from major markets in Europe:
+ In the United Kingdom, 89% of email made to the inbox. France did almost as well with an 88% inbox rate while Germany was in line with the European average at 85%.
+ For email being sent to the "spam" or "bulk" folder, the United Kingdom had the lowest rate at just 3% while Germany had the highest with 11%. France was right in the middle with nearly 5% of email sent to the "junk" or "bulk" folder.
+ A significant percentage of email was categorized as "missing" or not delivered at all. In both the United Kingdom and France 7% of email went missing. Germany did slightly better with just 3% in this category.
The report also looked at non-delivered rates (messages routed to junk/bulk folders or blocked all together) by Internet Service Provider (ISP) in France, Germany and the UK. Inbox placement rates varied significantly from ISP to ISP. In the UK, toughest inboxes to get into were Demon, BT Internet, AOL, Orange, and Yahoo!. In France, it was SFR, AOL, LaPoste, Yahoo!, and Orange and in Germany, it was Web.de, AOL, Yahoo!, Freenet, and GMX.
Categories: Email Deliverability | News | Response
Feb
02
By George Bilbrey
President
Today, Return Path is pleased to present our Global Deliverability Benchmark for the second half of 2009. We conducted this study by monitoring data from our Mailbox Monitor service for email campaigns deployed from July to December 2009. We tracked delivery, blocking and filtering for more than 600,000 campaigns. In addition we reviewed non-delivered data for hundreds of ISPs in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the Asia Pacific territories.
Here are some highlights and key findings:
What does this data tell us about the state of email marketing? The answer is clear: deliverability is still a crisis for commercial email senders.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News
New York, NY - As commercial email senders increasingly turn to email marketing to help drive sales and attract new customers, problems remain in ensuring that requested emails successfully reach consumer inboxes. In the second half of 2009, 19.9% of commercial, permissioned emails never reached consumers inboxes in the United States and Canada, a slight improvement from January - June 2009 when 20.7% of commercial, permmissioned emails failed to reach consumers inboxes, according to the new Return Path Email Deliverability Benchmark Report. European inbox placement rates fared slightly better with 15% of requested, permissioned emails never reaching consumer inboxes.
Permissioned email reached only 80.1% of consumer inboxes in the United States and Canada during the second half of 2009 (July through December), a .8% increase from the 79.3% inbox placement rate recorded in the first half of 2009. In the United States and Canada, 3.5% of those emails were delivered to a "junk" or "bulk" email folder and 16.3% were missing or not delivered at all - with no hard bounce message or other notification of non-delivery. In Europe, 85.5% of emails reached consumers inboxes, 3.6% of emails were delivered to a "junk" or "bulk" folder, and 11% of emails were missing or not delivered at all. In the Asia Pacific region, inbox placement of permissioned emails was higher in the second half of 2009 with 86.9% of emails reaching the inbox. 10.7% of emails were missing or not delivered and 2.5% of emails were delivered to a "junk" or "bulk" folder.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News | Press Releases
Jan
25
Our new episode of Reputation Radio is now available on iTunes.
In this episode, we interview Peter Blair, Security Specialist at Tucows. Blair discusses the biggest misconceptions among marketers about deliverability and how ISPs handle mail. Blair also talks about Tucows' Feedback Loop for email senders, and he discusses the recent debate about ISPs use of engagement metrics as part of email deliverability.
Is there someone in the email universe you think we should interview? Do you have a question about email deliverability or sender reputation>? Call (320) 52EMAIL (523-6245) and leave a message. Or, email us: podcast@returnpath.net. We might use your question in a future episode.
Listen to episode 14 now and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss a minute of Reputation Radio.
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News
Jan
21
Neil Schwartzman
Director, Certification Security & Standards
Many of us have seen the heart-wrenching scenes from the world's latest natural disaster, in Haiti, and want to help.
Unfortunately, there are some who would take advantage of the situation, and people's charitable nature, and put fraudulent requests for money online. As Linda McGlasson over at the Bank Info Security blog said 'there Is a special place in hell' for people like this.
Let's hope so, because the sad, awful truth of it is that Symantec is reporting that they have already seen spam fraudulently claiming to be from the Red Cross, soliciting donations for Haitian Earthquake relief funds. There have been sporadic reports of fraudulent tweets on Twitter, and some Google search results have been skewed in an attempt to divert people to malware and phishing sites.
Tell me moreCategories: News
Jan
20
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
As I wrote a few months back, I recently joined the DMA's Board of Directors and its Executive Committee to try to help the association - one of the largest and highest profile groups representing marketers - advance its agenda in a few specific ways. At the time, I noted that my interests would be on consumer advocacy and engagement, execution around interactive marketing issues and the internet community, and transparency around the organization itself.
Yesterday, John Greco, the association's CEO, announced he is stepping down to make way for the next generation of leadership. John has done some great work the past five years running the DMA and has advanced it materially from where the association was when he took over in terms of interactive marketing, but he recognized (the hallmark of a good leader) that it was time for a change.
There are all sorts of questions people have about this announcement, and I've already gotten a number of calls and emails from people trying to read between the lines and get some inside scoop. Some of the questions have answers - others don't at this stage or can't given confidentiality agreements.
Tell me moreCategories: News
Privacy | Copyright 2010 Return Path, Inc.