Who owns the inbox

One of the questions asked of my panel during Connections 16 last month was who owns the inbox.

My point of view is that the end user owns the inbox, with a few minor exceptions. For instance, in the case of a business, the business owns the inbox. With email marketing, the marketing is entering a personal space as an invited guest. Senders need to be cognizant of this to continue having access to the inbox.

Another panel participant said that marketers own the inbox. While I don’t necessarily agree I found her argument persuasive. Her point was that senders own the inbox because they have the ability to tailor messages to get there. That it is the sender’s behavior that results in inbox delivery. While I don’t think that means that the sender owns the inbox, I do believe that means the sender owns their delivery to the inbox.

Chad White was in the audience for that session and went back and asked the Litmus community who they think owns the inbox. Their community came down on the side of the recipients, by a sizable margin.


The whole post is worth reading and I encourage people to head over to Litmus to look.

Litmus also has a graphic talking about the hierarchy of email.

I think the hierarchy of respectful, functional, valuable and remarkable is a pyramid. Not sure I’m totally sold on the metrics (you can have forwards without conversions, for instance) but it’s a good visualization of the foundation of a strong email program.

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Necessary but not sufficient

TechnicalTwitterConversation
With all the emphasis on getting the technical right, there seem to be people who think their mail will be delivered as long as the technical is right.
Getting the technical right is necessary for good inbox delivery, but it’s not sufficient.
The most important part of getting mail to the inbox is sending mail users want. In fact, if you’re sending mail folks want, interact with and enjoy then you can get away with sloppy technical bits. Look, major players (eBay and Intuit) have invalid SPF records, but we’re all still getting mail from them.
There are also a lot of folks who are doing everything technically perfectly, but their mail is still going to bulk. Why? Because their recipients don’t want their mail.
Permission is still the key to getting mail to the inbox. In fact, permission is more important than getting all the technical bits right. If you have permission you can play a little fast and loose with the technical stuff. If you have the technical stuff right you still need permission.
 
 

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Ask Laura

An Advice Column on Email Delivery
When we work with brands and senders to improve email delivery, there are many questions that come up again and again. For 2016, we thought it might be interesting to answer some of those questions here on the blog so others can benefit from the information.
Confused about delivery in general? Trying to keep up on changing policies and terminology? Need some Email 101 basics? This is the place to ask. We can’t answer specific questions about your server configuration or look at your message structure for the column (please get in touch if you’d like our help with more technical or forensic investigations!), but we’d love to answer your questions about how email works, trends in the industry, or the joys and challenges of cohabiting with felines.
Your pal,
Laura
AskLauraHeader
 
 

Dear Laura,
I’m having a hard time explaining to our marketing team why we shouldn’t send email to addresses on our lists with very low read rates, that are dormant but not bouncing, or that spend less than 2 seconds reading our mail. I’m also struggling to convince them that it’s not a good idea to dramatically increase email volume during the holidays (i.e. going from one send/day to 2-3 sends/day).
We already segment based on recency, engagement, and purchase behavior, and we also have some triggered messaging based on user behavior.
Can you help me find a way to help explain why sometimes less is more?
Thanks,
The Floodgates Are Open

Dear Floodgates,
ISPs ask two fundamental questions about email when it comes in:

  1. Is it safe?
  2. Is it wanted?

If the answer to both those questions is yes, the mail is delivered to the inbox.

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Fraud, terms of service and email marketing

gavelHere at the Atkins house we’re still both recovering from the M3AAWG plague. I don’t know what it was that we shared during the conference, but it’s knocked many folks over. I don’t have a lot to blog about this afternoon so I was looking through some of my old blog posts to get at least some content up before I give up for the weekend.
I found an old post about permission (Permission: It May Not Be What You Think It Is). The post discusses where a woman sued Toyota over emails from an online marketing campaign. I’d totally forgotten about that blog post, so I started looking at what happened with the case.
In the original case Toyota created a social media campaign where people could opt their friends in to be the target of a prank.

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