50% of e-mail marketers cite deliverability issues

50% of e-mail marketers say deliverability is their top marketing challenge, but 34% of online marketers surveyed still have not taken any measures to improve e-mail deliverability, according to a report from JupiterResearch. Jupiter’s findings also suggest that while taking on even a few activities to improve delivery gets results, taking multiple actions is even better. Jupiter’s study, “The state of deliverability: sender accreditation and tactics to improve e-mail delivery,” found that of the surveyed marketers who’d taken steps to boost e-mail delivery rates, the largest percentage – 27% -- depended on ISP white listing programs. Other tactics to improve deliverability included using a dedicated IP address with the ISP, used by 18% of those surveyed; publishing sender identity records, used by 17%, as well as other practices. Jupiter found that in general, marketers who use multiple tactics saw more improvement in e-mail delivery than those that use fewer tactics. Marketers who have seem delivery improvement use an average of 2.73 tactics, compared with those who haven`t seen improvement after using an average 2.05 tactics. “Despite this positive correlation, marketers are not embracing as many delivery best practices as they should,” according to the report, which advises a “cocktail approach” incorporating a range of best practices. Adoption of e-mail sender accreditation by senders and receivers isn’t yet widespread, but Jupiter forecasts that ultimately adoption will be driven by acceptance of the practice by leading IPSs. Jupiter predicts that top-level ISPs will begin to trial and adopt a variety of accreditation systems by the end of this year, and advises marketers to begin to familiarize themselves with e-mail accreditation service vendors.