95% of problems come from newsletters, not promotions
May 8, 2008 – 1:10 pmI just got off an ESPC call where Cloudmark was presenting. Very cool stuff. Learned they protect over 600 million inboxes around the globe via just about all the major ISPs.
Anyway, the guy from Cloudmark said he knew he’d be on a call with a bunch of email service providers (ESPs), so he looked us all up in their database to see if he had any records on us (this is the part of the call where you could hear a pin drop).
Then he said something along the lines of, “95% of problems that ESPs have seem to be coming from relationship newsletters, not sales promotions.”
Huh?
Newsletters are the problem? Newsletters are supposed to be the safe bet in email.
The speaker hypothesized that it’s all math. When you send a “promotional email,” you’re probably sending it to a very large list (like 10,000 people). So when 10 people report it as spam, it’s not so bad. When you send your company newsletter, you’re probably sending it to a smaller group (more like 1,000 recipients). So when those 10 grumpy people report the newsletter as spam, it’s a higher percentage of your recipient list, and looks worse. Now, he admitted that he didn’t have a lot of time to research the cause—he was just guessing.
But then some people from another ESP said they were experiencing issues that seemed to indicate that his hypothesis might not be correct. Darn.
So we have no definitive answer.
Still, it’s something to think about. Cloudmark looks up ESPs in their spam database, and sees that our customers are getting marked as spam more for newsletters than promotions. That we know.
I have my own theory, based on my experience running the abuse desk here at MailChimp.
Promotional campaigns are hard. Usually, it’s the experienced email marketers who do promotional campaigns. People who run e-commerce websites. People who generate promo codes, and build landing pages. They code emails with tables and product photos and use Google Analytics integration to track conversion. They’re syncing their databases using our API so they can segment based on customer behavior. The skill level and experience is higher, so they’re more likely to be aware of email marketing etiquette and spam laws and ISP feedback loops.
Newbies don’t do promotional campaigns so much. They just do newsletters. Newsletters are easy. Newsletters are fast. And newbies are more likely to make these mistakes (I see it over and over and over again):
4 Responses to “95% of problems come from newsletters, not promotions”
Great post. My experience in email marketing has been the same exact thing. I find that most promotional messages are treated very carefully, recipients chosen wisely, templates well designed, and landing pages crafted for maximum conversions. However it’s these monthly or bi-monthly newsletters that are thrown together for the last minute because they “have to go out” to a list that is old, never cleaned, and was created long before double opt-in became the industry standard.
At any rate, thanks for your great blog and wonderful tips. I am constantly learning from you guys and you have a stellar product.
By Priscilla on May 8, 2008
And since newsletters keep coming every week or every month, it’s much more obvious to the recipient when their unsubscribe request has been ignored.
By J.D. on May 8, 2008
Thanks, Priscilla. In your comment, you pretty much summed up about 7 years of my abuse desk experience in one paragraph. Nice.
By Ben on May 8, 2008
Unfortunately, I’ve spent a long time on the other side of the fence, trying desperately to convince the powers that be that we should really clean up these newsletter templates and their associated lists.
I’m trying to preach the Permission Marketing gospel everywhere I go, but it’s a hard message to sell in today’s business environment where most companies still see email marketing as free and a mailing list as expendable.
However, I’ve often had very good success by being able to present in the conference room the numbers and research you guys do. So thanks for doing it because it’s more helpful than you know!
By Priscilla on May 9, 2008