Only 76% of global emails sent to local Russian mailbox providers reaches the inbox and one in four messages are sent to spam or blocked, says Inbox Placement Benchmarket Report 2014 prepared by Return Path.
The results showed trends that are common globally, however, some were quite specific for the Russian market. As for the emails distributed inside Russia, the commercial messages delivery rate is significantly lower than in other markets questioned: only 64% of emails reach their subscribers.
The share of international email reaches may differ depending on the country of distribution. However, the general trend shows that senders outside of Russia sending emails to Russian mailboxes encounter difficulty: while German senders and marketers from the United Kingdom reach on average 89 percent of Russian mailboxes, French companies fail to do so for 30 percent of their subscribers.
Among the countries that participated in the research Russia has the lowest share of email reaches:
Compared to the rest of the world, email marketing in Russia has yet to reach its maturity. Of one million emails sent to Russian ISPs 240.000 are not being delivered, opened and clicked. Of all Emails from Russian businesses to Russian ISPs only 64% get into the inbox. Low inbox placement numbers are the result of a lack of understanding of filtering techniques implemented by Russian mailbox providers, which are constantly evolving.
Russian mailbox providers use different techniques and have different requirements for email delivery, and knowledge of these requirements is often considered a sender’s responsibility. Mailbox Providers use sender’s reputation to make filtering decisions. A poor reputation means your email will get blocked.
What is the sender’s reputation built on?
An average e-mail inbox receives about 400 commercial messages a month from brands that the inbox user actually subscribed for. Some of them get read, others are either never opened, deleted or even get a spam complaint reported. Seventy five percent of email reported as spam is actually graymail. This means that the user gave permission to receive those messages either directly or indirectly, that they come from legitimate and reputable sources, though the relevancy of their content, interest and priority for the inbox user are fluctuating.
Best practice senders have low complaint rates. Percentage of their email delivered to the inbox that subscribers mark as “spam” or “junk” should be no bigger than 0.1%. Their messages must be sent to actual email addresses, where no more than 2% of recipients no longer exist or marked as undeliverable. Finally, their spam trap rate should be equal to zero.
Last year Return Path signed partnerships agreements with Mail.ru and Yandex, whose combined users account for more than 90% of all consumer mailboxes in Russia. Now, Rambler is becoming our partner too. In partnership with these mailbox providers we create a whitelist for trusted senders allowing for higher and more consistent inbox placement rates of legitimate and secure that only emails people want and expect reach the inbox.
All the approved certified senders can apply via an email service partner and need to pass a compliance audit by Return Path as well as continually maintain compliance with program standards.
Jan Niggemann is Regional Director Central Europe at Return Path.
This study was conducted using a representative sample of more than 492 million commercial email messages sent with permission to consumers around the world between May 2013 and April 2014. Global and regional statistics are based on performance across more than 150 mailbox providers in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions; country- and industry-specific statistics are based on a subset of senders whose location and industry classifications are identifiable.
- To download the full version of Inbox Placement Benchmarket Report, please click here. Information about Return Path’s offering to Russian marketers may be accessed here.
