The American Marketing Association sends out weekly webinar invitations
for marketers to learn more about specialized topics. The
AMA recently sent a campaign to a typical list of 20,000 marketers. According
to Lynette Rowlands, marketing manager, they typically see bounce
rates of around 2% and open rates of 35 – 45%.
However, this particular invitation campaign, which promoted an
upcoming webcast on local media budgets, saw open rates of only
32% and bounce rates of over 6% - three times the average. When
Lynette questioned the campaign performance, she began to analyze
the contents of the email.
With the help of gravityMail’s SpamScore feature, Lynette
discovered the phrase “best rates” in the copy. Since
this phrase is used frequently in mortgage-related spam, filters
like SpamAssassin automatically assigned the message a score of
4.1. Other elements in the email (such as HTML layout) scored the
email at 7.1 – well over the 5.0 threshold that SpamAssassin
typically tolerates.
As a result, any companies that use the freeware SpamAssassin
filter tool would have likely blocked this message. Firewalls, which
also scan for such phrases would have blocked the message as well.
While not all firewalls and filters report bounces, this helped
explain the AMA’s higher bounce rates, and lower open rates
on this campaign.
Rowlands has found SpamScore's predictive analysis to be invaluable in optimizing her email deliverability rates. "The success of our webinars depends on our ability to reach interested marketers. If our choice of words or layouts are going to keep thousands of prospective attendees from getting the email, we want to know why, and how to adjust," she says. "At this point, SpamScore has become such an integral part of our campaign process, I feel uncomfortable sending an email without having consulted it first."
Learn more about the gravityMail SpamScore tool, or conduct a fast and free evaluation of your latest email campaign here. SpamScore's protection is a standard feature available when you send your permission email campaigns with gravityMail. Contact us today for a demo or price quote.
Administrivia
Questions? Comments? Contact:
Brian Klais
Editor, grayMatter
grayMatter @ gravityMail.com
p: (608) 285-6600
f: (608) 285-6601
(c) Copyright 2003 Netconcepts. You may forward this message only
if the entire message is left intact.
|
