Why Your Customers Aren’t Getting Your Emails

Savvy marketers know that email is one of the most important and cost-effective communication channels in their toolkit. But as customer databases grow and more emails are sent out, companies are faced with the challenge of dealing with bad email addresses and the consequences that come with them.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as Gmail, Hotmail and AOL, actively filter incoming mail for their users. Increasingly, ISPs rely on a mailer’s reputation to determine what emails will get through to the user’s inbox. In fact, according to Return Path, 77% of delivery problems are based on a sender’s reputation.

While a slightly poor reputation will cause a few emails to show up in the spam folder, a bad reputation will partially or fully block messages from coming through entirely. Once a sender’s reputation has been damaged, it takes time and effort to regain a positive relationship with the ISP(s).

While a lot of factors go into sender reputation, the accuracy of email addresses is paramount. It’s critical that businesses have a data quality strategy in place to ensure the accuracy of email addresses.

By identifying and cleaning invalid email addresses on the back-end and applying email verification services at the point of capture, companies can significantly improve email list quality in three main ways:

1. Increased deliverability and reduced bounce rates – accurate data means emails have a better chance of being delivered to inboxes, ensuring continued communication with consumers.
2. Improved engagement – by delivering messages to interested consumers, businesses are more likely to see messages opened and clicked, driving up consumer engagement.
3. Lower mailing costs – sending deliverable emails through an Email Service Provider (ESP) will reduce costs associated with blasting invalid email addresses.

Email campaigns are important for keeping customers loyal, happy and coming back for more. Marketers should consider a strategy to verify email data as the first step to ensuring an open and effective communication channel.