Last month we revealed the results of our survey into benchmark deliverability rates at each of the major ISP’s in the UK. This highlighted some interesting results & provided us with various action points for ensuring good deliverability.

However what we also thought would be a useful insight for many marketers would be to see how their deliverability rates compare against others in their industry.

The Results

	AOL	Gmail	Hotmail	Lycos	Orange	Tiscali	Virgin	Yahoo	Total
B2B	100%	100%	78.57%	92.86%	92.86%	100%	100%	85.71%	94.81%
B2C	100%	100%	84.62%	76.92%	92.31%	100%	100%	76.92%	93.71%
Finance	77.78%	100%	55.56%	50%	88.89%	100%	100%	55.56%	84.69%
Retail	100%	92.31%	73.33%	92.31%	92.31%	100%	100%	76.92%	93.01%
Travel	100%	98.44%	73.44%	100%	93.33%	100%	100%	73.33%	94.55%

On the whole results are fairly consistent in terms of the order of harshness of each ISP. Hotmail & Yahoo are the strictest across all industries.

What we have seen is a difference in results for certain industries.

If you sell financial services products you are going to have more problems than most at achieving good deliverability rates. The terms you are likely to use in your copy are close, if not the same as many spammers.

For example here are two subject lines:

1) Excellent Mortgage Rates
2) Clear those credit bills

One of the above is a legitimate permission email and one is a spammers message. You can see straight away the issue financial marketers face, as all of these terms are considered spammy.

While it is difficult to overcome this issue there are things you can do to minimise the likelihood of your email going to junk.

1) Ensure you use a clean subject line – don’t use any high risk words here as they will score more.
2) Try not to repeat key spam phrases throughout the copy
3) Got a big headline? Try sending it as an image but be warned if images are blocked as no-one can see it. Also don’t just make your email as an image as this will cause issues.

Retail & Travel sectors also have more problems at Hotmail & Yahoo compared to other industry emails.

These two sectors tend to use more sales language – words like offers, free & latest are all widely used and considered more likely to be spam.

Again think about the subject line but also try to tone down the language if you are having issues.

Of course relying on these benchmark figures to evaluate the effectiveness of your emailing is not a good idea. A marketer who has the time, patience and a good delivery tool should always be able to achieve 100% deliverability.

What this survey should highlight to you is how much of a problem deliverability is in your sector.