The A-to-Z of Deliverability

BEST PRACTICES IN REVENUE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
LEAD SCORING
DELIVERABILITY
SALES
ENABLEMENT
ATTRACT
ENGAGE
REPORTINGCONVERT
CONVERSION
OPTIMIZATION
USER
EXPERIENCE
ASSET DELIVERY
MOBILE
OPTIMIZATION
MARKETING
AUTOMATION
CRM
INTEGRATION
DATA
LEAD
MANAGEMENT
PROGRAM
ARCHITECTURE
© March 2013 Bulldog Solutions. All rights reserved.
www.bulldogsolutions.com

ACQUISITION STRATEGIES
Validate List Sources
– Keep in mind – when buying or renting lists, they result in a higher number of
complaints and bounces. Instead, organically generate your own leads and lists.
– If you do buy lists, make sure you trust the list provider regarding data
quality and timeliness. Understand:
• Source of data
• Age and last usage date
• How they monitor and remove complainers
• How they verify and maintain opt-in status
– Only send to email lists that have been recently compiled.
– Review Eloqua’s Outside List Acquisition best common practices document
– Regularly review the performance of purchased data to determine whether a
source is worth your investment

BOUNCES
MSI campaigns maintained consistent hard bounce rates, averaging 1.5% over the course
of 2012 with spikes for new audiences or audiences that are typically under-
communicated with. Eloqua manages hard bounces by automatically processing those
addresses and removing them from future mailings.
The soft bounce rate averaged slightly higher at 4.2% but trended higher during different
points in the year. Soft bounces are not automatically processed by Eloqua as a soft
bounce can be transactional in nature, meaning an address can soft bounce one day and
be deliverable the next.
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
Hard Bounce Soft Bounce

CONVERSION MEASUREMENT
The measurement of email deliverability is an important marker to
observe and optimize due to its demonstrated ties into digital
marketing performance. In general, there are two key focal points
when it comes to improving the success of any digital marketing
campaign:
• Get more visitors to your offer
• Do more with your current visitors
Deliverability, alongside traffic generation and attraction activities,
is a subset of Point #1 – increasing the amount of inboxes in which
your marketing campaign will land. The higher the deliverability
score, the more value created from the current marketing
database – without additional acquisition tactics or programs.

DATA
Good email address:
bill.subscriber@yahoo.com
Bad email address:
lrx11tg32@spamex.com

FILTERS
Filter on Recipient Activity
Segment by behaviors and target offers based on digital body
language to reduce complaints and improve your reputation.
– Filter contacts that have NOT opened or clicked on an email
within the past 3 to 6 months. Send a separate campaign
asking them to remove themselves from your list, manage
their subscriptions, or tell you what you can do differently
to raise their interest.
– After several unsuccessful attempts to obtain opens, clicks
or unsubscribes, suppress contacts from future distribution
lists.
– Focus on quality over quantity.

GMAIL
defined as… Any email account that is accessed through a Web browser. The interface is implemented as a
Web site that provides access to the various functions like reading, sending or organizing messages. Emails
are typically not downloaded to the user's computer but stored on the Web-based email service provider's
servers. Popular examples of Web-based email services include Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

GMAIL
> Challenge
– Recurring/consistent bulking at Gmail
– No visibility into feedback loops
> Need
– Prove Motorola emails should be delivered
– Busy season approaching
> Solution
– Stop mailing inactive Gmail subscribers
– Monitor inbox delivery
– Slowly “loosen the reigns”
> Results
– 100% Gmail inbox delivery

Know Your Sender Score.
– Measure and monitor it for free at http://www.senderscore.org. All scores are
based on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is the worst and 100 is the best possible
score.
– According to ReturnPath the benchmark for a good sender score is 90.46.
– Current Motorola Solutions Sender Score
Authenticate your Email IP Address.
– Publish IP-based solutions like Sender Policy
– Framework (SPF) and Cryptographic solutions
like Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), SenderID and DMARC
– Create separate records for each type of email
communication, such as promotional, transactional, newsletter
and corporate.
HOW-TO HELP IMPROVE DELIVERABILITY

Control Complaints.
– Monitor complaint trends throughout each email campaign.
• Do certain types of campaigns create higher complaint rates with your audience?
• Always test major changes in content, copy, creative, frequency of sending and even send timing.
Testing allows you to gauge tolerance for change among your audience and react accordingly.
– Avoid getting on blacklists. Monitor http://www.dnsstuff.com
– For your IP addresses, use the free lookup tool at
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
or see black listings via the Blacklist Monitor service from Return Path.

Gain Recipient Permission and Respect Recipient Preference
– New Recipients
• Only send to those who have explicitly requested email from you.
• Target "neutral" contacts (i.e., those who have neither opted in nor opted out) with the goal of
gaining permission.
– Active Recipients
• Strengthen the relationship with active opt-in contacts by soliciting feedback on the quality and
frequency of your communications, and their communication preferences. Confirm preferences with
the recipient and then comply.
• Send only what the subscriber signed up to receive.
– Inactive Recipients
• Re-engage inactive contacts by confirming subscription status one or two times per year.
• Nurture inactive contacts and cut inactive contacts after they fail to re-engage after a set timeframe

Perform IP Warming Before Launching Campaigns On New IPs.
– Send to all addresses in a phased manner and then remove hard bounces.
– Confirm the list doesn’t contain previously unsubscribed and bounced addresses.
– Use recent contact information only (i.e., less than 6 months old) and
consider segmenting by domain for optimum cleansing.
– Use HTML with simple design, minimal images, and short copy.
– Consider an introductory email for new contacts or contacts that have not been
contacted very recently.
– Review reports after each send to pinpoint problems before the next send.

Process Bounces
– Remove hard bounces immediately.
– Keep hard bounces under 3% for each campaign.
– Monitor spam bounce reports and complaints over time to identify trends that
help pinpoint changes in your marketing processes that may have hurt your
reputation.
– Regularly review soft bounces, messages provided in soft bounce reports can
point to larger problems and trends
Reinforce Email Expectations
Clearly communicate your privacy policy and the type of content you send and when.
– Send a welcome message to new email subscribers with instructions on how to
ensure the emails get delivered and the benefits of subscribing.
– Check in with contacts periodically to verify that they are satisfied with your
content and highlight options for changing their communication preferences.
– Move your subscription management options to the top of your emails so they
don’t get overlooked

Optimize Relevancy and Frequency
– Use automated programs to test frequency and determine the optimal mix for
your target audience.
– Ask subscribers for input and feedback on relevancy and frequency.
Optimize Content
– Make sure you are clearly communicating your message-even with images
turned off.
• Use preheader text and optimize for a preview pane (which typically does not display with images)
• Review the content and aesthetic of the text-only version of your emails
– Consider implementing responsive email design that is flexible enough to
encourage mobile email readers to interact with your message as well, recent
studies* shows mobile email opens account for 41% of email opens.
– Optimize your content for conversion, limit the number of calls to action and
keep them above the fold.
*http://emailblog.eu/2012/09/14/email-marketing-stats-knotice-mobile-email-opens-report-on-first-half-2012/

Code Appropriately
– Do not include unsupported Flash, scripts or embedded videos in email.
– Keep html tags to the minimum necessary to achieve the design objectives,
excess code can land your messages in bulk or spam folders.
– Use ALT text under images for better end-user experience when images are not
rendered by default.
– Use web-safe fonts to keep the volume of images lower and size of your emails
smaller

JUSTIFICATION
High Growth,
High Efficiency
High Growth,
Low Efficiency
Low Growth,
Low Efficiency
Low Growth,
High Efficiency
Revenue Performance Analysis (RPA) Against Industry Peers

MOBILE OPTIMIZATION
Optimizing HTML Emails for Mobile
• Avoid using long subject lines, which will push the email content even farther down an already-
small mobile screen.
• Reduce the width of your emails to 640 pixels or less. The newest smartphones can zoom out on
wider email but mobile-friendly widths have been shown to increase a user’s interaction and click
through rate. Held in vertical orientation, most smartphones have screens between 320 and 480
pixels wide so if you email is 640 pixels wide it can be viewed on a mobile device zoomed out 25-
50%, so a subscriber gets a somewhat legible view at the email before zooming in.
• Decrease the size of your email files. Mobile internet speeds are slower than desktop connections,
so keep the files smaller so that they can be downloaded and viewed faster on mobile devices.
Some mobile devices will require an additional click for a user to download the rest of an email
when the file is too large. The optimum email weight is less than 20k.
• Increase the size and padding of text link and button calls to action. When pressed against a screen,
a finger covers 45 pixels. Make sure your calls to action are padded at least 10-15 pixels to avoid
user frustration when trying to click through.

MOBILE OPTIMIZATION
Optimizing HTML Emails for Mobile
• Mobile-friendly emails mean users can click through to your website from a mobile device. When
designing landing pages consider whether they are mobile friendly too? If it isn’t, subscribers will be
discouraged from clicking through or taking your calls to action.
• Optimize landing page widths to keep mobile-friendly, similar manner to mobile optimized emails.
• Keep landing page copy brief. Save the details for another page deeper inside your site, mobile
users who are looking for more information will visit from a desktop computer.
• Remove flash from landing pages and instead opt for HTML5, CSS3 or JavaScript. The iPhone and
iPod Touch (which represent the largest portion of mobile web traffic) don’t all support flash and
neither does Blackberry. Flash is supported for Android but often has a long load time which
discourages users.
• Remember for touchscreen users there is no hover-over for links, if they touch they click. Make
sure your calls to action are padded at least 10-15 pixels to avoid user frustration when trying to
click through.

THE OSTRICH EFFECT
Your reputation as an email sender impacts your potential reach
as a marketer. These practices can earn you a poor deliverability
score, preventing your emails from reaching your desired target:
• Lack of adherence to an email privacy policy
• Poor list management
• Frequency and relevancy of sends
• Complaints from recipients
• Spam trap and blacklist hits
• End-user engagement with your emails
• Message Content (actual copy but more so coding and technical
architecture of messages)

TESTING
Review and Refine
Generate reports that provide insight into bounces, complaints, and unsubscribes.
– Keep bounce rates under 3%. Monitor bounces by contact list, by email/email
batch/email groups.
– Keep complaints under 0.01% by monitoring spam unsubscribes (i.e., contacts that
reported your email as spam).
– Keep unsubscribe rates below 1% by monitoring unsubscribe trends:
• How does this email campaign’s unsubscribe rate trend against average performance? If there is a
variance, pinpoint how this email differed from others in terms of list quality, content, etc.
• Is my unsubscribe rate trending upward? If so, investigate a possible frequency or relevancy
problem.

UNSUBSCRIBES
Make Unsubscribing Clear & Easy
– It may sound counter to your goals but the easier you make it for your user to
find the unsubscribe link the less likely they will report you as spam instead of
unsubscribing.
– Unsubscribe links should never be “hidden,” not only does it increase the
chances someone reports you as spam it also is a bad business practice is
questionable at best in terms of CAN-SPAM compliance.
– Employing a preference center that allows users to “opt-down” from
subscriptions (both in terms of frequency of emails and types of communication)
increases the chances you will keep a subscriber.

VOLUME
Volume of email is another important factor to your sender reputation.
Inside Eloqua and Return Path, volume is the number of emails reported
by ISPs that contribute data to the Reputation Data Network maintained by
Return Path.
While mailing volume is not inherently good or bad, high volumes are
likely to trigger tighter scrutiny by ISPs and inconsistent sending patterns
or large volume spikes will trigger similar inspection. It is best to
establish a cadence of sending and maintain it over time to keep a
consistent volume and avoid such examination by ISPs.
Frequency of sends is important in that you should keep a consistent
frequency. If you have dips and spikes in your sending that are without
pattern it is likely that you will appear to be a spammer to more stringent
filters.

EXCLAMATION
POINTS
(and other special characters)

WHY DELIVERABILITY MATTERS
When your email can’t be delivered you fail to get the results or
revenue:
– Open Rate: 13%
– Conversion From Email Open to Form Submit: 6.5%
– Conversion From Form Submit to Sale: 0.5%
– Number of Emails Sent: 100,000
– Number of Emails Delivered (Sent minus Bounces): 95,000
– Average Sales Price $150,000
Delivery
Rate
Number
Received
Number of Emails
Opened
Number of Form
Conversions
Number of
Sales
Sales
Value
95% 90,250 11,733 763 4 $571,959
83% 78,850 10,251 666 3 $499,712
64% 60,800 7,904 514 3 $385,320

ZERO TOLERANCE
Today's email marketers are finding it harder and harder to be
heard. As a result, you need to master deliverability and privacy to
rise above "noise" from social media, other email marketers, and
even new techniques like word-of- mouth marketing.
Failing to monitor deliverability can cause financial harm to your
company in more than one way. Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
are constantly adding new systems to stop your emails, and failing
to monitor and secure your deliverability is a silent killer of email
marketing.
In addition, legal compliance with legislation like CAN-SPAM and
CASL C-28 is crucial to avoid costly fines.

ANNUAL AVERAGE Q1 AVERAGE Q2 AVERAGE Q3 AVERAGE Q4 AVERAGE BENCHMARK
Sender Score 90 93 95 98 96 90.46
FilTered Messages 6.01% 8.22% 6.94% 3.28% 9.47% 0.39%
Complaints 0.45% 0.38% 0.82% 0.52% 0.11% 0.07%
Volume (Hundreds of Thousands) 5.6 3.3 4.6 7.2 9.2
Sender Rejected 0.77% 0.30% 0.18% 0.28% 3.15% 0.22%
Unknown Users 1.13% 0.96% 1.33% 1.65% 0.85% 0.93%
Spam Traps 0 0 0 0 0 0
Blacklists 0 0 0 0 1 0
FBL Complaints 0 0 0 0 0 0
SNDS Complaints 0 0 0 0 0 0
Highlights:
• Sender Score averages are consistently above benchmark
Areas to Improve:
• Message filtering, Sender Rejected and Complaints are substantially over benchmark numbers on a constant basis, regular testing of
messages and implementation of design best practice in addition to keeping regular cadence with known audiences and warming new
audiences should help keep these numbers in check for 2013
• Unknown user numbers are slightly higher than benchmark, this is only of concern when spikes in complaints and sender rejection are
seen at the same time, to keep unknown user numbers low implement warming and welcome campaigns for new audience segments
and implement rules for dropping inactive contacts from regular communication
2012 PERFORMANCE vs BENCHMARKS

2012 METRICS
1.1
2.73.4
7.1
1.30.5
2.52.22.8
6.8
3.2
6.3
3.82.4
4.25.4
10.7
1.1
10.6
0.10.0
2.21.1
10.3
1.8
9.9
0.1
16.5
26.0
10.7
1.9
16.0
0.3
4.54.3
0.4
11.0
1.10.20.6
2.6
18.418.2
14.014.514.2
0.00.4
10.7
18.1
7.8
0.0
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Sender Score Volume (Hundreds of Thousands) Fitlered Messages Complaints Sender Rejected Unknown Users
NRF Pre-show &
Narrobanding Webinar
Invite
Modex Preshow
Federal IP Warming
LEX700 Demo &
Manufacturing
NurtAttrract
Send 1
Retail Shopper
Survey &
NurtAttract Gov
PA
RetailMonthly Awareness
eDM, Innovation Paradox
to T&L, Gov Nurture,
MotoTRBO Send B
Retail MPOS Nurture,
Wireless MESH Webinar, Gov
Radio Accessories Nurture
Touch 2
Promat Sends – were
stopped due to high
complaints, spam trap hit and
blacklist hit

0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Jan1-7
Jan8-14
Jan15-21
Jan22-28
Jan29-Feb4
Feb5-11
Feb12-18
Feb19-25
Feb26-Mar3
Mar4-10
Mar11-17
Mar18-24
Mar25-31
Apr1-7
Apr8-14
Apr15-21
Apr22-28
Apr29-May5
May6-12
May13-19
May20-26
May27-Jun2
Jun3-9
Jun10-16
Jun17-23
Jun24-30
Jul1-7
Jul8-14
Jul15-21
Jul22-28
Jul29-Aug4
Aug5-11
Aug12-18
Aug19-25
Aug26-Sep1
Sep2-8
Sep9-15
Sep16-22
Sep23-29
Sep30-Oct6
Oct7-13
Oct14-20
Oct21-27
Oct28-Nov3
Nov4-10
Nov11-17
Nov18-24
Nov25-Dec1
Dec2-8
Dec9-15
Dec16-22
Dec23-29
Sender Score
Sender Score
2012 METRICS

0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
Decreased Deliverability Impact on Open Rates
Open Rate Sender Score
2012 METRICS

0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
Sender Score Impact on Click-Through Rates
Click-Thru Rate Sender Score
2012 METRICS

0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
Sender Score & Bounce Rates
Hard Bounce Soft Bounce Sender Score
2012 METRICS

7.8
20.6
11.4
14.8
11.5
37.6
14.2
10.4
3.0
14.2
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Dec 30 - Jan 5 Jan 6 - 12 Jan 13 - 19 Jan 20 - 26 Jan 27 - Feb 2 Feb 3 - 9 Feb 10 - 16 Feb 17 - 23 Feb 24 - Mar 2 Mar 3 - 9
Sender Score Volume (Hundreds of Thousands) Fitlered Messages Complaints Sender Rejected Unknown Users
Residual impact of end of
December Promat sends
HIMSS invite sent to
largely inactive
Healthcare database
High PCR volume during this
week including co-branded
webinar which garnered
high spam complaints
2013 YTD METRICS

2013 YTD METRICS
84
86
88
90
92
94
96
98
100
Dec 30 - Jan 5 Jan 6 - 12 Jan 13 - 19 Jan 20 - 26 Jan 27 - Feb 2 Feb 3 - 9 Feb 10 - 16 Feb 17 - 23 Feb 24 - Mar 2 Mar 3 - 9
Sender Score
Sender Score

The A-to-Z of Deliverability

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