The first step to obtaining a high level of user engagement is permission. Before you send someone an email, you should obtain their permission, right? Not exactly. Engagement comes when users REQUEST mail, not just concede to receive it. How many times has a telemarketer called and asked for you, and you tell them that you are not home. They say they will call back at another time, hoping to find you home. Inside you say "Ughhhhh" but you hear your voice say "Okay, that sounds good." They know it's you, they know you are home, and they know you will pretend not to be home next time they call. But they will do it anyway, because you didn't tell them not to.
A deliverability vendor recently contacted me and said that a big client was having trouble sending to AOL and asked me to look into it. This sender is one that I have worked with repeatedly in the past and that causes me much consternation. They claim to send only opt-in notifications to their members, yet the statistics on the mail are abysmal -- high complaints and low engagement all around. They had fallen off my radar for a while but they were back. Evidently our IP reputation system was not happy with their mail and was delivering most of it to the spam folder.
I take a look. Stats are still abysmal. What we are sending to the inbox is generating complaints. What we are sending to the spam folder is going unnoticed. All engagement metrics are low. Everything about this mail stinks, which obviously does not add up to opt-in notification mail. Hmmm...
I decide to test it out myself. I visit the website and try to run a query. To see the results of my query, I am requested to log into the site or create a new login. I create a new login, and before I submit my request, I see the tiny print telling me that by creating this account, I permit this site to send me periodic notifications. I click submit, generate my account, and view the results of my query. That day, I begin receiving notifications from this website that there are new listings on their site that match my query. There is a link in the email telling me that I can modify my email settings, so I click on that and am taken to the website. Here, I uncheck all of the email notification boxes, so I should never be contacted by email again. In essence, I am not required to receive emails in order to do searches on their site, but I am forced to initially sign up for those emails then unsubscribe manually.
So, I speak to the sender and explain to them that their permissions process needs fixing, and until they fix it, our reputation system will continue to deliver their mail to the spam folder. He does not believe that it's a permissions issue, considering all of the mail is opt-in. Which brings us back to the word REQUEST.
When I signed up on the site, I was required to give permission (i.e., opt in to receive their email notifications) in order to proceed with my account creation. Is it permission-based? I guess I'd have to agree that it is. But is it wanted? The sender has no idea whether it's wanted. I didn't request these emails, and I wasn't given the option to request them. Now, the sender can argue until his face turns blue about permission, opt-in, CAN-SPAM, etc. But at the end of the day, this practice leads to bad user engagement and more mail being delivered to the spam folder. In this case, we were not blocking the mail outright, because there are, in fact, a large number of people who DO want this mail, and we want to be sure that they get it. Why not just let those people request the mail, which would increase the chance they get it in their inbox and actually look at it? What good does it do to send mail to people that don't want it, thereby having most of it get delivered to the spam folder?
So I made some recommendations. First, the account creation process needs to be modified. Users should be asked whether they would like to receive email notifications. Expectations should be set as to which emails they will be receiving and how often. The site should be as flexible as possible, allowing users to customize their mailings (I may want a notification when new items matching my search are available, but may not want a weekly summary, for instance). Second, he should remove from his list anyone who didn't specifically request the emails and who also hadn't visited his site in some period of time.
The sender complained that doing this would negatively impact his bottom line. He was afraid that people, if asked, would not subscribe to the emails. He said his site received a lot of activity from the emails, because a lot of people don't realize they want the emails until they actually receive them. Basically, he wanted to send email to everyone who ever visited his site, in the hopes that some of them would not mind. He would remove those who complained about it, and then have a squeaky clean list. Unfortunately for him, it doesn't work that way.
Bottom line... Permission isn't enough. Our best practices document says "Ensure that you are only sending mail to users who specifically requested it." Look at your opt-in process. Are people really requesting your mail? If not, I'd bet you aren't seeing the inbox delivery you'd like to see.
Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team
