Deliverability is a crucial issue for all brands, and with data privacy updates such as the iOS15 ones – it’s not going to get easier. Making sure that your emails land in your customers’ inbox could make or break your CRM efforts. And with all the painstaking work that marketing departments put forth in creating top-notch mailers, there’s nothing more disappointing than finding out that your customers didn’t receive them.
That’s where Optimove comes into play. Here’s how.
An enterprise-grade, stationary retailer wanted to make sure that their latest office supplies and desk accessories were sent out to customers via email marketing campaigns.
So, they completed a successful strategic IP warm-up, which lasted just over 3 months due to a combination of their anticipated daily send volume of nearly 20 million messages and their preferred method of dual-sending from their historical ESP as part of the migration.
However, shortly after the client began managing their segmentation strategy and campaign execution, 7 out of the 11 IPs they were sending from were blacklisted. Email engagement rates declined and overall program performance saw a negative impact from poor sender reputation.
Watch: 126% Increase in Email Revenue, in 4 Months
The solution? An Optimove deliverability expert stepped in to save the day by creating a full-spectrum approach that would improve performance, delist all IPs, and maintain its original clean status. As well as proactively monitor all key reputation factors.
See for yourself how well it worked in the chart below:
By working closely with public blacklist monitoring agencies, Optimove was able to actively delist and maintain full delisting of all 11 IPs throughout the holidays for the stationary retailer, helping to ensure a successful holiday season.
This can be attributed to Optimove’s relationship with the postmasters at all major ISPs and our deliverability team’s expertise in expediting specific cases for resolution. As well as efficiently and swiftly monitoring and handling difficult deliverability issues with the above mentioned agencies.
Other challenges the giant enterprise experienced was a failure to include attributes that would suppress non-email engaged and lapsed email engaged users. And, the spike the company had in spam trap hits could be, in part, attributed to this.
Optimove’s recommendations for segmentation and assistance with working with a 3rd party hygiene and validation partner helped to cleanse the user list for all potentially harmful addresses. By following these recommendations and other sender best practices, the enterprise-grade, stationary retailer significantly reduced spam trap hits and saw a positive impact on their bounce and block rates as well, as seen in the chart below:
The result? The stationary retailer saw a 26% increase in open rates when comparing post-warm-up performance in September 2019 to post-remediation performance in March 2020. Moreover, by suppressing potentially harmful addresses from their sending strategy, this retailer also achieved a 10% increase in Unique Click Through Rate (UCTR) during the same time period as well – an important KPI to focus on specific to email engagement as we look to the impact Apple’s iOS 15 privacy update will have on the accuracy of opens and open rate data.
A secondary company, this one in the beauty and makeup industry, was having issues with subscriber engagement and inbox performance for several months. So, they approached Optimove’s deliverability team for ongoing support, to identify opportunities, and receive recommendations on how to increase overall business performance and engagement.
The recommendation? In March 2020, the brand was advised to take an aggressive look at how they were segmenting users in an effort to eliminate potentially harmful addresses from their lists. This led to a 91% month-over-month decrease in the number of blocked addresses negatively impacting reputation and nearly a 60% reduction in spam trap hits.
When comparing October’s open rates to April, the makeup brand had seen dramatic improvements in engagement with customers. Tracking the positive impacts, changes this brand made in just one month to their segmentation and sending practices helped to impact overall performance and led the brand to CRM success.
However, as noted in the table below, the quick, turn-key efforts made in just one month’s time also led to a dramatic 290% increase in UCTR during the October to April time period, which helped to drive more traffic to their website.
For information on how to keep your email program healthy, particularly in the wake of data privacy updates such as iOS15’s, see more proven, useful, email marketing best practices here.
Dana Shirlen leads Optimove’s internal email marketing agency as Director of Email Marketing. Dana has over 15 years managing the email marketing strategies of many recognizable global B2C and B2B brands. As the Director of Email Marketing, Dana is bridging the gap for Optimove’s customers in providing a data-driven marketing plan and timely implementation grounded in best practices, targeted content and visually engaging design. Prior to her role at Optimove, Dana managed the CRM and email marketing strategies for enterprise clients at Tinuiti. Dana holds a BS from Ohio University, with a major in Advertising Management and concentrations in both marketing and creative writing.
