Nearly a quarter (22%) of opt-in marketing emails never made it to inboxes in the first half of 2013, according to a recent study by Return Path.
Based on a sample of nearly 1 trillion messages sent worldwide, the report found that 18% of all email messages sent with subscribers' permission either were blocked or went missing, and another 4% were delivered to spam or junk folders.
Below, additional key findings from the Email Intelligence Report: Placement Benchmarks 2013.
Global Trends
- Inbox Placement Rates (IPR)—the percentage of sent email delivered to addressees' inboxes—declined globally by 4% since 2012, according to the report.
- The Asia-Pacific region led the worldwide decline, slipping to an IPR of 64%.
- On the other hand, American senders slightly improved their IPR to 86%.
- European marketers had an IPR of 80%, lower than their North American counterparts, despite improvements in Germany and France.
- In South America, Brazilian marketers continued to struggle to reach subscribers, losing more than 40% of their email to blocking or spam folder delivery.
Rates by Industry
- Several large industries, including retail, posted meaningful IPR gains in 2013.
- Social networks' IPR declined to 75%.
- Non-profit organizations improved their global IPR dramatically in 2013, placing 90% of their messages in subscribers' inboxes.
Gmail
- 86% of American senders' messages reached the Gmail inbox.
- Reaching Gmail inboxes was far harder for senders from Brazil (53% IPR).
- Only 7% percent of all Gmail messages were routed to the Priority Inbox.
- Finance-related mail (17%) was more than twice as likely to reach Gmail's Priority Inbox, whereas social networks' mail (5%) was the least likely among major categories.
- Messages that were part of an active conversation, either replies (24%) or forwards (11%), also reached the Priority Inbox more often.
- Any message categorized as a "statement" was far more likely to reach the Priority Inbox (26%), but only 5% of those identified as "coupons" were found there.
About the research: The report was based on an analysis of nearly 1 trillion messages sent through more than 150 mailbox providers during the first six months of 2013.
