4. Monitor List Delta
Figure 2 – Listrak’s Delivery Report
As stated earlier, email gives you more data than any other channel – so use it! The only way you’ll know if you have a reputation problem is if you take the time to analyze your data to identify negative trends in your deliverability.
For example, the image on the right highlights a problem. The sender’s delivery rate plummeted from an average 96.36 percent to 78.51 percent and the bounce rate jumped from an average 4.94 percent to 21.49 percent. However, the opens, reads, and clicks for this campaign were inline with other sends. If the marketer only looked at open and click metrics, he wouldn’t have noticed the deliverability issue.
You should monitor your deliverability and bounce rates after each email deployment. You can take it a step further by looking at your metrics by ISP so you can tell if your emails are being blocked or filtered by one of them. That way, you can take immediate action to resolve your reputation issues.
Figure 3 – Listrak’s Domain Delivery Report
You should also closely monitor your subscribe and unsubscribe rates so you know what’s working and what isn’t. If you send an email campaign and unsubscribes spike, you’ll know that the content wasn’t relevant, the frequency was wrong, or there were other problems with the message. These same problems could cause reputation issues so you must find out the reason for the spike and resolve it immediately.
Figure 4 – Listrak’s Abuse Report
As you review your data, be sure to monitor feedback loops so you can remove any subscribers who report your message as spam. Listrak is integrated with feedback loops and complainers are automatically removed from your lists and added to your global suppression list so you don’t inadvertently continue to mail to them. You can monitor this data in Listrak’s Abuse Report.
Using your data and following best practices for list acquisition, list management, and frequency will keep your subscribers engaged and your reputation positive. But once you have the best practices in place, you should take the extra steps to authenticate and certify your messages. That way ISPs will have proof that you are a legitimate sender and your messages will be delivered to the inbox every time.