Understanding & Overcoming Top Email Inboxing Challenges by Amber Paul, DMS Senior Vice President of Distribution, April 20, 2021 For many publishers, robust email marketing campaigns are integral to success. Well-planned email strategies offer benefits up and down the funnel, creating brand awareness, driving traffic and encouraging conversions. However, a recent study by Webbula, Email Hygiene And Verification Trends And Benchmarks, found that email inboxing issues are an ongoing problem. Email Inboxing Challenges Include Spam Traps And Disposable Domains Email marketing has long been one of the most effective tools for advertisers and publishers trying to reach consumers. And throughout 2020, email became an even more useful engagement strategy as consumers spent more time online during the pandemic. Despite email’s proven effectiveness, the recent study from Webbula notes that difficulties with inboxing persist, particularly in 2020 when more email than ever was being sent and opened. “Email send volumes grew 7%, while open rates increased by 13% YOY in 2020,” noted Webbula in the study. What Webbula calls “hygiene and validation threats” ranged from reputation difficulties, including “blacklisting emails, spam traps and honeypots,” to delivery issues, including “improperly formatted email addresses, disposable domains and duplicates.” Source: Webbula Publishers Should Take Action To Overcome Email Inboxing Challenges While it may make sense to purge “bad” addresses, Webbula urges brands to be cautious. “Some in the email industry recommend removing all unresponsive email addresses [attributed to things like blacklisting and spam traps] from your list – but that could mean losing 30% or more of your subscriber base,” notes Webbula. Unless open rates have precipitously declined, and the overall list needs to be scrubbed, the benefit of “billboarding” – using subject lines to pique consumer curiosity and drive visits to websites – may outweigh the increased open rates of streamlined email send lists. Regular maintenance of email lists can eliminate truly ineffective email addresses (those that bounce, for example) while not impacting database volume drastically. Additionally, publishers can deploy certain content and technology strategies that make the most of their email campaigns and targeting opportunities, including: Creating relevant content reflected in subject lines, including promotions, deals, timely offers and breaking news, increasing interaction and improving deliverability. Checking all redirect links, including those of advertising partners is a simple, yet crucial step to maintaining a positive reputation. Prioritizing emails that do not come from anonymous sources or unfamiliar domain names. Following all CAN-SPAM guidelines, including the presence of unsubscribe buttons, and ensuring unsubscribe URLs stay live and active for a minimum of 30 days post email deployment. Creating email groups for targeted, personalized strategies, increasing open rates by enhancing relevance. Optimizing email strategies when bounce rates are up and click through rates (CTRs) are down by focusing on content with high engagement, even if it does not yield the highest ROI immediately. Email marketing is a long term marathon, not a sprint. Building Healthy Subscriber Lists Is Essential To Mitigate Email Inboxing Issues Regular maintenance of subscriber lists continues to be essential in 2021, and maintaining focus on continuing to scale new subscribers is a cost effective way to keep subscriber lists growing while inactive subscribers are filtered out. Strategies like adding social sharing links to your emails, ensuring your website has a clear subscribe call-to-action and leveraging push notifications to complement emails can all help drive new email subscribers. Are You Looking For New Ways To Monetize Your Traffic? Once you’ve made updates to help overcome common inboxing challenges, you need the right partner to help you monetize your traffic. DMS Performance Ad Market (formerly W4) is committed to offering a diverse selection of high-yielding campaigns and providing the best publisher support in the industry. The DMS Performance Ad Market gives publishers the tools needed for maximum success, including one-on-one expert advice along with the best performing campaigns at the absolute highest price points. We offer flexible, on-time payment terms to support scale. We value our publisher relationships, ensuring our publishers are handsomely rewarded for their loyalty and business. Click here to apply to become a DMS Performance Ad Market publisher. Filed under: Blue Book, Featured, Revenue, Revenue Blog Tagged under: affiliate marketing, Disposable Domains, DMS, Email inboxing challenges, Spam Traps About the Author Amber Paul, DMS Senior Vice President of Distribution Combining an entrepreneurial spirit with a well-versed affiliate marketing background, Amber Paul has established herself as an industry veteran in the digital marketing space. With her dynamic skillset – from marketing strategy development to customer acquisition and branding solutions to B2B marketing – Amber has spent more than a decade matching branded, high-performing offers, delivering quality traffic to elite advertisers, and maximizing ROI for customers and campaigns. She has delivered consistent results through each role she entered, including Vice President and partner of AKMG, Inc., GlobalWide Media (acquirer of AKMG), and Union Square Media Group. Bringing her passion and vision to Digital Media Solutions (DMS), Amber is the Senior Vice President of Distribution, where she intelligently distributes marketing campaigns through an expansive network of publishers across multiple online channels, while providing the technology, testing, analytics, process, experience, and people-power to help brands achieve their campaign goals profitably.