New Research Shows Marketers Who Focus on Subscriber Engagement Get More Email Delivered to the Inbox

In partnership with global research firm Demand Metric, leading email
solutions provider Return Path today released a new research report, The
State of Email Engagement. Following on the results of
last year’s The State of Email Marketing report, this new
research sought to understand the impact of subscriber engagement on
email deliverability, as well as the tactics marketers are employing to
improve engagement.

Email remains the go-to marketing channel for many organizations, and a
key contributor to marketing effectiveness. In fact, survey respondents
who reported their organization is experiencing revenue growth were more
likely to identify email as one of the most important or the most
important marketing channel (68 percent), compared to organizations
whose revenue is flat or declining (58 percent). Successful marketers
also understand that subscriber engagement is the key to ensuring that
email reaches subscriber inboxes. Findings from this new research
highlight this critical relationship, and demonstrate that marketers who
embrace the importance of subscriber engagement also enjoy better email
deliverability and greater overall email effectiveness.

Demand Metric researcher John Follett said of the study’s findings,
“Marketers clearly value email and understand its importance. Nearly two
thirds of our study participants rated it as one of the most important
channels—or the most important channel—in their marketing arsenal.
However, in many cases, these same marketers are surprisingly unaware of
the impact that subscriber engagement has on the success of their
marketing program.”

Other key findings from the report include:

• Marketers who understand that mailbox providers use engagement data
  to filter email report better deliverability. More than half of
  the survey participants were neutral or disagreed with the statement,
  “Mailbox providers use subscriber engagement to determine where to
  filter (e.g., inbox, spam) the email you send.” However, marketers who
  agreed with this statement were much more likely to report good or
  very good deliverability.
• List segmentation is a major driver of deliverability. Almost
  80 percent of study participants report that they are doing some
  degree of list segmentation. Less than half of those who don’t
  practice list segmentation report good or very good deliverability,
  compared with two-thirds of those who segment their email lists.
• Email personalization has a positive impact on engagement. The
  vast majority of study participants (80 percent) personalize marketing
  email content at some level. Marketers who personalize email content
  reported a 16 percent higher open rate and nine percent higher
  click-through rate than those who do not personalize.
• Marketers have not yet embraced engagement metrics in measuring
  success. While open and click-through rates provide some insight
  into engagement, other metrics are important to get a more complete
  picture. Three quarters of survey participants are currently
  tracking opens and clicks, while less than one third are tracking read
  rate (30 percent), forward rate (15 percent), and complaints (13
  percent).

“Over the past several years, there has been a marked increase in
mailbox providers’ focus on subscriber engagement as part of the spam
filtering process. This study confirms that keeping subscribers actively
engaged with your email program is a major factor in email
deliverability and overall effectiveness,” said Tom Sather, Return
Path’s senior director of research. “By embracing engagement
metrics like read rate, forward rate, and complaint rate, marketers
can gain unique insights that can improve deliverability and enhance
customer relationships.”

The complete report can be downloaded here.

Methodology

Research for this study was conducted via an online survey administered
between December 10, 2018, and January 21, 2019. During this period, 256
responses were collected, 221 of which were complete enough for
inclusion in the analysis. Only valid or correlated findings are shared
in this report. Respondent breakdown was self-reported as follows: 46
percent mostly or entirely B2B, 12 percent mostly or entirely B2C, 33
percent blend of B2B and B2C, and nine percent nonprofits.

About Demand Metric

Demand
Metric is a global marketing research & advisory firm serving a
membership community of 100,000+ senior marketers with primary research
& benchmark reports, technology research & advice, consulting services,
training, events, productivity apps, and a library of 500+ practical
tools and templates. Demand Metric's core focus is to help B2B marketing
organizations improve internal capabilities and connect their activities
to revenue growth.

About Return Path

Return Path analyzes the world’s largest collection of email data to
show businesses how to stay connected to their audiences and strengthen
their customer engagement. We help mailbox providers around the world
deliver great user experiences and build trust in email by ensuring that
wanted messages reach the inbox while spam doesn’t. To find out more
about Return Path solutions, visit us at returnpath.com
or request
a demo.

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