Striata: Where Every Message Counts
- Published on Friday, 02 July 2010 00:00
In an industry that frequently changes the rules, what ensures successful email delivery today, may not be a factor tomorrow.
“Monitoring spam ratings based on email content, coding and graphics, used to provide a reasonable expectation that a message would be delivered,” says Mia Papanicolaou, Head of eMarketing at Striata. “This is no longer the case. Email Service Providers (ESPs) have a much bigger role to play than simply advising on email content.”
Papanicolaou lists several factors that have a direct impact on email delivery, such as sender reputation, delivery failures and spam complaints from opt-in recipients.
“Achieving successful email delivery requires an ESP to focus on the full scope of an email’s journey from sender to recipient. There are measures and ratings at different points in this journey that must be managed.”
Upstream service providers, corporate network administrators and the email recipients themselves all become part of a chain of stakeholders that impact on the ESP’s ability to deliver an email.
Citing bounce-back rates as an example, Papanicolaou says strict measures need to be put in place to proactively manage databases, minimising the number of delivery failures. “Sending emails repeatedly to non-existent email addresses is picked up by Internet Service Providers (ISP) as potential spam activity. The ISP is obliged to act on suspicious activity in order to avoid being penalised by their upstream providers.”
It is vital to ensure that email marketing content is relevant and valuable as the end recipient is able to “rate” the communication by doing nothing, unsubscribing, marking as junk mail or complaining directly to the ESP or to their service provider.
Papanicolaou says, “The email marketing recipient has more of a voice than ever before, and will use that voice to object if the communication is untargeted, irrelevant or badly presented. Consumers can even voice their opinion by doing nothing, as an email communication that achieves low open or click rates is clearly inefficient.”
In partnership with Striata, retail giant Makro achieves excellent email delivery rates on its electronic communication campaigns. Striata’s deliverability strategies, coupled with Makro’s focus on data integrity, have resulted in delivery rates consistently above industry averages.
“We work closely with our clients to address each aspect involved in ensuring deliverability is maximised. Striata’s reputation for getting the messages into inboxes is based on sound, clear strategies and proven results,” concludes Papanicolaou.
"Striata is by far the best vendor I have ever worked with in my entire career." 