Orvis boosts e-mail delivery rate to nearly 98%
Retailer Orvis boosted the inbox delivery rate of its subscribed e-mails to nearly 98% after working with vendor Return Path to find and fix the issues that were limiting deliverability, the company reports.
The initial analysis of Return Path’s Manager Program determined that about 20% of Orvis’ subscribed e-mail had been going missing, not even reaching subscribers’ junk e-mail folders. A deeper look showed several reasons why, and the actions then taken by Return Path and Orvis decreased the rate of missing e-mail to about 2%.
Orvis had not been set up on the feedback loops of a number of Internet service providers. Feedback loops are the mechanism by which ISPs provide e-mail senders with information on e-mails that generated complaints, in most cases including the e-mail address of the complainer, which allows the sender to remove that addressee from their list. Without being on ISP feedback loops, Orvis was unknowingly continuing to send e-mail some senders rejected.
Deeper analysis also showed that Orvis, without realizing it, has not been conforming to specific connection protocols at ISPs BellSouth and AT&T, with the result that its e-mails were generating enough complaints to result in those providers blocking e-mail from Orvis.
Return Path worked with Orvis to set the retailer up on the feedback loops of MSN, United Online, Outblaze, AOL and Excite, which helped the retailer clean up its lists and was a key factor in increasing deliverability across all of those ISPs.
Additionally, Orvis and Return Path got the blocks lifted at BellSouth and AT&T by adjusting Orvis’s program to conform to their protocols and thereby reducing the complaint rate. Return Path also worked to get Orvis white-listed at both Yahoo and SBC, which improved deliverability at those ISPs.
“Return Path manages all aspects of our deliverability,” says Chris Woodard, manager of e-commerce content and e-mail at Orvis. “They are super-proactive when problems arise so we can nip them in the bud early. As we learned, deliverability problems can quickly snowball and the longer you are blocked, the harder it can be to get back in the inbox.”
Back...
