Download White Paper_Email Delivery to the Big Four

Email Delivery to the Big Four:
AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo
A White Paper on How Email Deliverability
Differs Between the Four Most Popular
Global Email Providers
Patrick Owens
Email Technology Specialist
AccuData Integrated Marketing
Contents
Introduction...3
Current Popularity of Global Email Providers...4
How Each Provider Differs with Deliverability...7
What Does the Future Hold for Digital Marketers...11
Introduction
One of the biggest
concerns marketers
face today is the
risk of subscribers
drowning in a deluge
of irrelevant content.
Email marketing remains atop the list as the primary
marketing tactic for small and large businesses alike.
Approximately 97% of businesses are using email
marketing to try and convert recipients into buyers
and it must be working as 76% of subscribers have
made a purchase from an email marketing message.1
According to research by VentureBeat, nearly 70% of
marketers will use more email marketing in 2015 than
in 2014.2 The value is high, therefore businesses
everywhere are working to improve the coverage and
quality of their emails and are sending even more.
There’s a fire hose of content aimed at every inbox and
only the best of the best will stand out.
As a reputable email marketer, what can you do to
ensure that your emails are delivered to the inbox and
seen by your intended audience? Anything that affects
whether your outgoing email appears in front of the
recipient comes under the heading of deliverability.
Email deliverability differs greatly between the four
most popular global email providers. With fewer than
80% of legitimate emails ultimately hitting their
intended recipient’s inbox, it’s important to understand
those differences and how to navigate them to ensure
the success of your marketing efforts.3
Email Delivery to the Big Four
3
Current Popularity of
Global Email Providers
During B2C deployments, the majority of records fall
within a handful of global service providers: AOL,
Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, and Yahoo (Hotmail and
Outlook both fall under the umbrella of Microsoft).
Over the last decade, there has been much discussion
on which email service is the most popular.
This is important information for email marketers, as
each service provider poses different challenges when
it comes to deliverability. Understanding and
overcoming these challenges will help email marketers
maximize the deliverability of their email campaigns,
while increasing the overall ROI of their marketing
efforts.
AOL
Before 2000, AOL was one of the primary email
accounts in use by the majority of internet users, but
over the past decade, AOL has remained flat showing
very little growth.
Present day, we see a much different AOL email
environment. New AOL accounts are virtually
nonexistent; only legacy accounts are still in use by
users that have not switched to other more popular
services.
AOL accounts are seen as a good solution for spam
accounts, in that people use these email addresses to
sign up for accounts and services from which they
intend to receive a lot of spam. Generally, these users
will never check the account after the initial
registration process.
Google
After 2005, Gmail took hold of the internet landscape
by ushering in a new minimalistic search experience
called Google. Online consumers quickly took notice
and Google took a foothold.
Google has immersed itself in everything to do with
the internet and today is a popular solution for email.
The majority of new email accounts being created will
come from Google services through the remainder of
2015.
Microsoft
With Microsoft's constant influence on our day-to-day
work flow, it is no wonder that their Hotmail service
began gaining momentum in 2005 alongside Google.
It is important to note that Hotmail merged with
Outlook.com as one universal service in 2013 (this
merger also included Live.com).
While Hotmail emails are still in use, all new accounts
created will fall under the Outlook.com domain.
Microsoft email services are still being utilized to a
large degree as a runner up to Google services.
6%
Sender Reputation
Filters4
17%
77%
Domains in Content: 6%
Content: 17%
Sender Reputation: 77%
Email Delivery to the Big Four
5
Yahoo
Between the years 2000 and 2005, Yahoo’s popularity
was propelled through the increasing use of their very
popular search engine.
In 2014, Yahoo started to mirror AOL’s life cycle with
less new account creation and movement to other
services. Hotmail, Gmail, and Outlook.com have taken
hold of the Internet as the new choice of email services.
Yahoo, like AOL, is used by many as a spam account
that will be checked infrequently, if ever.
Google trends highlighting consumer interest in
email providers over time
How Each Provider Differs
with Deliverability
Spam Traps
Hitting spam traps
during an email
campaign can result
in severe deliverability
issues for the sender,
including a poor
reputation.
Spam traps are used by email providers to target poor
sending practices. Spam traps are either abandoned
email addresses that have been made into a trap or a
specific email address created with the sole purpose of
being a spam trap. Email marketers may run into spam
trap issues when purchasing and renting lists,
especially from a vendor that does not ensure opt-in
verification. Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo may classify
third-party opt-in as unsolicited bulk commercial email
and result in high bounce rates, even if spam traps
have not been triggered.
AOL creates spam traps from abandoned or canceled
accounts after a year or more. Microsoft does not
create spam traps; however, sending to inactive
accounts will impact a sender’s IP reputation over
time. Microsoft recommends standard list hygiene
measures to avoid any potential issues.
Google, like Microsoft, does not make old emails into
spam traps, but focuses on how many inactive emails
are engaged during a campaign. Yahoo has very little
information public about their spam traps.
Email Delivery to the Big Four
7
Engagement
As global email volumes increase, providers are relying
heavily on the engagement activity of emails to
determine the legitimacy of the senders. For a long
time now, email marketers have relied on basic rules to
make sure they were avoiding spam:
• Certain words were advised not to be included in
subject lines
• An equal ratio of image and text in creative should
be maintained
While these rules are still important to remember, they
do not play as large of a role in determining whether a
sender’s email will have a shot at actually hitting the
inbox as they did in the past. The majority of email
providers gauge a sender’s reputation solely on
engagement actions of the campaigns sent before,
usually on a per account recipient level.
Engagement
Factors5
Mailbox Providers look
for signals that your
subscribers love your
emails:
Messages Read
Messages Read Multiple Times
Replies
Deleted Without Reading
Forwards
This is Spam
This is Not Spam
Email marketers need to focus on creating highly
engaging, targeted emails concentrating on creating
the positive engagement actions detailed below.
All service providers make a point of stressing that they
do not track links clicked within emails, as this poses a
privacy issue. Other levels of engagement are weighed
differently by each service provider.
AOL focuses on engagement actions like moving email
to a folder, reporting as spam, moving from spam to
inbox, and forwarding. AOL looks at engagement per
account level, so while a sender’s email may not hit one
AOL user’s inbox, it can hit another.
Google utilizes a complex algorithmic measurement of
user engagement, averaging all user actions per
account level. Google believes opens are not a large
indication of engagement.
Microsoft looks at similar engagement actions as AOL
while also focusing on email replies (puts the sender on
a safe list). Conversely, Microsoft also tracks recipients
who delete an email without reading it.
Yahoo focuses on bounce rates, emailing to unknown
users, total email volume, a sender’s IP neighborhood,
complaint rate and spam trap hits, as some of its main
indicators of reputation. Bulk emailing Yahoo servers,
even opt-in, may get a sender’s email severely
deferred.
Important Tips
AOL recommends utilizing the tools at your disposal as
marketers to improve campaign results. At a certain
point, AOL recommends not to continue to re-engage,
unengaged recipients. Simply remove them from your
list. If an AOL user does not log into their email for
more than 180 days, their account is turned off.
Compared to Google, a sender is much more likely to
hit an inactive email since AOL’s time frame is so short.
AOL recommends authentication of your emails
including signing up to their feedback loops.
Microsoft deactivates a user’s account following 1-2
years of inactivity. Feedback loops are critical for
Microsoft and should be used by Email Marketers. An
email feedback loop happens when the mailbox
provider forwards the complaints originating from
their users to the sender’s organization.
Email Delivery to the Big Four
9
Marketers can remove these subscribers from their
future sends and they can analyze complaint rates to
determine if their marketing content is not appropriate
for the recipients.
11%
6%
One-In-Six6
For every six commercial messages
sent worldwide, one never reaches
the subscriber's inbox
83%
Spam: 6%
Missing: 11%
Inbox: 83%
Google would rather accept all connections from a
sender’s email platform and then filter it into spam,
instead of blocking at the connection level. Google has
an incredibly large infrastructure to accomplish this.
Yahoo would rather do the opposite and block a
sender’s connection at the initial level and not accept
any of the message content into their servers.
Google looks at spam reports as a major indication of
reputation. Google usually sees higher complaint rates
with
larger
volume
campaigns.
Reactivation
campaigns see the highest spam complaints. If the
user has not signed up for a sender’s message the
chances they will get into a Google recipient’s inbox is
very low over time.
DNS: Domain Name
Servers
SPF: Sender Policy
Framework
DKIM: DomainKeys
Identified Mail
Yahoo likes to receive limited connections and
messages from the same sender. Throttling your
connections and sends to Yahoo is very important for
delivery to this service provider. Senders also must
make sure to have a reverse DNS, host name with an A
record, valid SPF and working DKIM.
Yahoo uses Spamhaus blacklist, so make sure you are
not listed there if you are experiencing issues with
Yahoo.
What Does the Future Hold
for Digital Marketers?
Email marketers will
need to become very
knowledgeable with
the engagement
actions Microsoft and
Google focus on to
allow messages into
their users’ inboxes.
This will be critical to
email marketing’s
success into 2016.
Google and Microsoft will continue to be the major
players in the email space moving into the next
decade, while Yahoo and AOL will most-likely fade into
internet history.
In the digital marketing mix, email has long been the
leader in terms of revenue and on average, returns $38
for every dollar invested.7 It’s the top preferred channel
for customers who wish to receive information from
brands, in fact, 72% of adults surveyed want brands to
contact them through email.8
However, information overload on every channel has
caused many challenges for email marketers. One
effect in particular is that the average person’s
attention span has dropped by nearly half in the last
ten years. The impact on email is an ongoing decline in
click rates because people have less time, less
patience, and more rapidly scan content when hunting
for meaningful information.
Email marketing is expected to continue to grow and
become an essential element in the marketing mix for
businesses of all sizes.
Email Marketers should focus on sending highly
engaging and targeted emails with great offers as
service providers will continue to rely heavily on
recipients’ engagement with previous campaigns to
determine whether to ultimately deliver the email into
the inboxes of your users.
Email Delivery to the Big Four
11
For more than 25 years,
AccuData Integrated Marketing
has remained dedicated to
addressing our partners'
challenges through innovation
and service.
Today, we are a leading data
solutions provider, helping our
clients succeed with a full suite
of data-driven marketing
solutions.
We propel marketing success for
thousands of companies through
our strategic data partnerships,
powerful technologies, and by
offering scalable data solutions
to meet the needs of both small
to mid-size businesses and large
national brands.
For more information, call us at
800-732-3440.
The Houston Chonicle, The Effect of Email Marketing on Consumer Behavior, August 18, 2015
VentureBeat, Email Marketing Report, April 7, 2015
3
Marketing Sherpa, 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, February 2013
4
ReturnPath Sender Reputation Filter Infographic, 2014 Inbox Placement Benchmark Review, September 24, 2014
5
ReturnPath Engagement Factors Infographic, 2014 Inbox Placement Benchmark Review, September 24, 2014
6
ReturnPath One-In-Six Infographic, 2014 Inbox Placement Benchmark Review, September 24, 2014
7
The Direct Marketing Association (UK), DMA National Client Email Report, April 2015
8
Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Research Chart: How Do Consumers Want to Communicate?, February 3, 2015
1
2
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