Lack of Email Deliverability Best Practices Means Complete Blockage of Email

How could a major online retailer go from a .69% bounce rate to an almost 50% bounce rate in just two days?

Footwear etc. was at the top of their email game. They are a recognized, award-winning leader in email marketing practices, yet they still face tough competition from other online retailers. And despite their innovation in the email arena, they didn’t have best practices in place to regularly assess their email deliverability and monitor their online sending reputation. They thought all was well, until they discovered their emails were getting blocked by major ISP Comcast.

The problem originated in April 2009 when Footwear etc. sent out the same email two days apart. That caused an alarm at Comcast and was the start of the problem. Comcast started blocking the email as having characteristics of spam. Initially overall click throughs and open rates were down, but not enough to cause concern, since Comcast only makes up 6.58% of the domain names emailed by Footwear etc. Even by July 2009, when Comcast was blocking every single Footwear etc. email, it only meant a 7% decrease in deliverability, which wouldn’t necessarily tell you a major ISP was blocking your emails, unless you had the tools to find out.

While Footwear etc.’s email marketing application provided deliverability statistics, those stats didn’t tell the whole story, so Footwear etc. was unaware of the problem. Then a subscriber called to say they weren’t getting any emails. And the questions started. Eventually Footwear etc. turned to ClickMail for help.

Using the deliverability expertise of ClickMail, the in-depth assessment tools of Pivotal Veracity, and the certification process of GoodMail, we were able to identify and fix the problem. Then using these same tools and expertise, we provided an in-depth assessment of and reporting on Footwear’s deliverability–both what they’re doing right and where there was room to improve.