1 in 5 emails ends up automatically in spam folders, the ‘Australia and New Zealand Email Intelligence Report’ revealed. The study analyzed emails from over 500 Australian brands and discovered that 17% of them are never seen by the recipients. These emails are automatically sent by Yahoo! and Gmail spam filters to the specific spam folder.
“Reaching the inbox continues to be a major challenge for marketers in Australia,” explained Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, cited by Marketing magazine Australia. “Traditionally many marketers focused on bounce rates to assess whether they were reaching subscribers, but those don’t tell the whole story.
“Today new metrics such as inbox placement rate and read rate are providing better visibility into email marketing performance, and while they still have progress to make, marketers are using email intelligence – data, analysis, and insight – to understand deliverability and continually improve the subscriber experience. More messages are reaching the inbox and ROI is climbing as a result.”
The report conducted by Return Path analyzed email marketing performance across 60 million mailboxes at a variety of ISPs and also revealed that Australian subscribers are using more and more their mobile devices to check their inboxes and open their emails.
“Mobile is emerging as a key medium in the evolution of email in terms of how consumers interact and engage with this channel,” added Blumberg. “We’re just at the beginning of the mobile phenomenon, and marketers will need to be keenly aware of the impact this will have on the email channel in the longer term.”
In these circumstances, marketers need to adapt to the trends and come up with a mobile email strategy fast, if they want to fully take advantage of the possibilities in front of them.
I admit that when it comes to promotional emails, there is a very fine line between being informative and spamming. But I must say that, even if I get a lot of spam emails, I have some good examples too. For instance, I participated in a contest and for that I had to create an account on a site. I checked the option to receive promotional emails from that company – with new offers, products or contests – and I have to say I think that they are doing a great job.
They only have 2-4 contests per year – and they rarely send emails concerning new products, despite the fact that they have several new additions each month. Moreover, when they send an email announcing a contest, the FIRST word in the subject line is: “Advertising” followed by the main element of communication. So yes, there is such a thing as promotional communication done right.