Bonnie Malone

1. Make Your
Emails Less
💩
Bonnie Malone
Sr. Director, Consulting & Knowledge
Return Path

2. 🤳🤳
http://rtpth.co/KCDigital

3. We Know Email
We have strong partnerships and access to rich data that
grant us insight into all aspects of the email landscape.Partners
We’ve built the world’s leading deliverability and
optimization products.Solutions
Our service team is comprised of the best and brightest
minds in the email industry.Services
We work with the world’s top brands across a wide variety
of industries.Clients

4. Partners
Return Path has built strategic partnerships with more
than 100 companies across the email space, including:
ESPs & Marketing Clouds Mailbox Providers Technology Partners

5. Solutions
Deliverability
We offer the industry’s most
recognized and valued certified
whitelist and data-driven solutions to
help email marketers understand,
increase, and monitor their
deliverability and reputation, enabling
them to immediately take action to
ensure their messages reach
subscribers’ inboxes.
Optimization
Our optimization solutions allow email
marketers to ensure their emails are
standing out in the inbox. With
increased insight into how, where, and
when customers are reading your
email, you can improve opens, clicks,
conversions, and ultimately your return
on email investment.

6. Your business expects great things
from your email marketing program

7. Because Email is Easy and Effective

8. 👧📧💩

9. When they
do, few Open
your emails
Your emails
aren’t reaching
the Inbox
If they Open,
no one is
Clicking

10. Your Emails Aren’t
Reaching the Inbox
📥

11. 1 in 5 Emails Never Reach the Inbox
📧📧📧📧📧
🙀

12. Sending
Identity
Sender
Reputation
Subscriber
Engagement
Inbox Placement is Driven by 3 Things
😎 💍🥇

13. What Defines Sending Identity
IP address
Authentication
Sending domain
＠
🆔
🥇

14. What Defines Sender Reputation
Length of
Sending
History
Message
Quality
Subscriber
Engagement
Complaints List Quality Infrastructure
👎 🛀 🏠
🥇 📝 💍

15. What Defines Subscriber Engagement
Messages read: A positive indicator
that subscribers want to receive
messages from a particular sender
Messages forwarded: A positive
indicator that the recipient desired the
message and that others may want
it, too
Messages replied to: A positive
indicator that a message is desired,
and likely personal in nature
Messages marked as “not spam:”
Subscribers marking messages in the
spam folder as “not spam” is a very
strong signal to mailbox providers that
email should have been delivered to
the inbox
Messages marked as spam:
A negative signal that email is spam
and does not belong in the inbox
Messages deleted before reading:
A negative indicator that your message
wasn’t relevant or desired

16. Traditional
Reputation
Global
Engagement
Gateway Delivery Agent
Subscriber
relative
engagement
List
Quality
Gmail Deliverability is Based on
Engagement

17. High engagement with sender /
High activity mailbox
High engagement with sender
/ Low activity mailbox
Low engagement with sender
/ High activity mailbox
Low engagement with sender /
Low activity mailbox
Specifically, relative engagement

18. Focus on sending to your most active subscribers1
Tweak sending order to drive higher apparent global
reputation
2
Suppress known dead addresses3
For Gmail, Three Sending Practices Matter

19. When They do, Few
Open Your Emails
📖

20. People Open Based on Recognition,
Subject Line
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Who it's from Subject Line Offer First few lines of
email
Do not open or
receive email
offers
Expected length
or size of email
% of subscribers

21. How Long Should My Subject Line Be?
• The most common length is
41 – 50 characters.
• Subject lines 61 – 70
characters have the highest
open rate.
• However, there’s no real
correlation between length
and open rate.

22. Certain Keywords Tend to Increase Read
Rate

23. …While Others Cause Them to Drop

24. 😀😀📧＝🏆 ∕ 💣😀

25. 😀 Emojis can help, but…
Test first
Don’t overdo it
Have fun

26. One in three people open
me if I’m in the subject line. But 14x more people report
me as “spam.”

28. Do more testing
with subject lines
Focus on urgency
and benefits, not
length
Beware the
novelty factor, but
💩 can make 📧 😍
😂
1 2 3

29. If They Open, No One is
Clicking
👇

30. Between
50% and 80% of email
performance
is based on the quality of
your list

31. Poor list quality drives lower read rates

32. Subscribers
are active at predictable times
but personalized timing is
hit or miss

33. Time your campaigns to align with
Subscriber behavior

34. Contextual Marketing fosters engagement

35. Proactive list
management
(opt-in and
suppressions)
Send in
timeframes that
align with
subscriber
behavior
Apply an informed
content strategy
1 2 3

36. 👧📧💩

37. Consistent
“from”,
Keep subject
lines fresh
Monitor and
manage your
deliverability
Align timing
and content
to subscriber
behavior
Reach the
Inbox!
Get more
Opens!
Increase
Clicks!

38. 🤳🤳
http://rtpth.co/KCDigital

39. Questions?
Bonnie Malone
Sr. Director, Consulting & Knowledge
bonnie.malone@returnpath.com
Follow me: @fsubonnie
@returnpath
Download: http://rtpth.co/KCDigital