Effective Marketing in the Customer Experience Economy

The cost of erroneously blocked e-mail — that sent to recipients who have given their permission to receive it — will reach $419 million in 2008, up from $230 million in 2003.

During the same period, the percentage of improperly blocked messages will drop from 17% last year to just under 10%, according to a report from Jupiter Research.

Read the full article: http://customaxi.typepad.com/maximizing_marketing/2006/02...

JupiterResearch forecasts that email marketing spending in the U.S. will grow from $885 million in 2005 to $1.1 billion by 2010, and the volume of spam messages per consumer will decrease by 13% a year during this same period.

According to the new report entitled: "U.S. Email Marketing Forecast 2005 to 2010," the overall growth of the market will be marked by growth in spending on retention, acquisition and transactional email. Filtering improvements made by Internet service providers are credited with the expected decline in spam. The average active email consumer will see a drop from 3,253 pieces of spam in 2005 to 1,640 pieces of spam in 2010. JupiterResearch is a leading authority on the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on business.

"ISPs are wise to improve spam filtering, and ensure that permission emails are not erroneously marked as spam," said David Daniels, Research Director at JupiterResearch and author of the report. "Consumers have a plethora of providers to choose from and will stray from those who do not effectively filter messages," added Daniels.

The JupiterResearch report also finds that email delivery rates have stabilized at an average of approximately 88% and are expected to surpass 90% over the next few years. By 2010, the cost of incorrectly blocked email will drop to $92 million from a high of $107 million in 2006.

"The next five years will see a more organized email marketing arena," said David Schatsky, Senior Vice President of Research at JupiterResearch. "Delivery rates will rise because of marketers' efforts to improve list management practices. And the greater control by ISPs over spam will mean a lot less waste," added Schatsky.

The cost of erroneously blocked e-mail — that sent to recipients who have given their permission to receive it — will reach $419 million in 2008, up from $230 million in 2003.

During the same period, the percentage of improperly blocked messages will drop from 17% last year to just under 10%, according to a report from Jupiter Research.

Part of the increase in wasted spending will come as marketers invest in retention-focused and sponsored e-mail messages that are blocked from recipients' mailboxes. Jupiter recommended that marketers invest in identity-based trust and bonded-sender programs; both methods increase the chance of delivery.

But these aren't the only obstacles facing e-mail marketers. While consumers reported a 26% increase in unsolicited e-mail, permission e-mail grew at a 36% rate, indicating that recipients were increasingly opting in to receive messages.

“The increase in e-mail volume and the fact that consumers are spending less time in their inbox is creating a consumer attention deficit to permission based e-mail marketing,” said David Daniels, research director at Darien, CT-based Jupiter Research. “Despite the year-over-year increase in permission e-mail, consumers only perceive an increase in spam.”

In a bid to protect its members from e-mail fraud and phishing, and to offer consistency to commercial e-mail senders, AOL will begin implementing Goodmail's cryptographic CertifiedEmail program and phasing out its IP-based Enhanced Whitelist.

As part of its e-mail security practices, AOL blocks the display of images and hyperlinks on most high-volume messages - except if senders are on the AOL Enhanced white list and maintain very low complaint rates. Beginning today, AOL will also allow senders who have undergone accreditation through Goodmail to display images and hyperlinks by default. Goodmail charges accredited companies a fraction of a cent per message sent.
In addition, AOL will add a "trust symbol" to messages sent by Goodmail's CertifiedEmail senders. It will appear in the inbox and the message window, so members will understand that a sender's identity and reputation have been verified.

It is rumoured that Yahoo will follow suit very soon.

Punish the victim, not the crime
There are multitude of ways to ensure increased deliverability to American ISPs. Many of them are free, or part of a service offered by – for instance - ESPs (Email Service Provider). With this initiative AOL and Yahoo are punishing legitimate (permission based) commercial emailers, by directly or indirectly forcing them to pay additional money to ensure delivery. Obviously the full impact of this initiative will not be known for some time, and much depends on whether the (free) white listing offering from both ISPs will receive the same focus in the future.

In my opinion we should put more energy into fighting spammers. According to a stat I read somewhere a couple of years ago, 80% of all spam stems from less than 10 senders. How difficult can it be to close them down?

Fighting spam by punishing the victims is – in my book – not a viable method.