Case study: how to solve a deliverability problem
At Digital Response we are often presented with certain challenges to overcome. Today, we will explain a recent case of one of our clients, whose problem was the steady decline in the Open Rate of their shipments.
Situation analysis
The client was having clear problems with his Open Rate. We decided to make a analysis of the most important metrics (Open Rate, Click Rate, Hard Bounce Rate, Soft Bounce Rate, Unsubscribe Rate...) by domains and we realised that the problem was in the Hotmail domains (Hotmail.com, Hotmail.es, Hotmail.fr, Outlook.es, Outlook.com, live.com, live.es). Specifically, and as you can see in the following image, the Open Rate at Hotmail was between 2% and 4%..
At this point, we try to solve the problem by keeping a close watch on the good practices for deliverability of the newsletter: Compensation of HTML code with images, control the deliverability of the newsletter with tools like Glock Appsbut finally we saw that it would be necessary to make a Warm Up of the IP address used to send Hotmail messages.
By Warm Up We refer to the process of warming up the IP used for sending. It is carried out to achieve a good IP reputation.
How did we do the Warm Up process?
The Warm Up process focused on only for users with a Hotmail domain. The customer differentiated between two types of users in this group: so-called ASSETSthose whom it regularly impacted and those who were SEMIACTIVESto whom he sent communications less assiduously.
Initially, it was decided to start the Warm Up process only with the users. Hotmail ASSETS, which we selected in a separate group that arrived at the 250k users. These, in turn, were divided into different groups, more or less homogeneous, to gradually add them to the shipments.
On the first day of the process, one initial group of 7k which was made up of the most reactive users: had clicked twice on a newsletter in the past 7 days. Sending after sending, the other remaining hotmail groups were added, each time doubling the volume of users: from 7k to 14k, from 14k to 28k, from 28k to 56... and so on, progressively until reaching the 250k of the initial group of Hotmail ASSETS.
During the process, we saw how, send after send, Hotmail enabled the client's campaigns to be delivered to users with this domain, or in other words, the emails arrived at their intended destination: the subscriber's inbox. Thanks to improved deliverability, the Open Rate increased considerably. In fact, we can say that nowadays the client already has a Open Rate from among the 14% and 21% in Hotmail.
What is the next step?
As explained above, the Warm Up process for users with a Hotmail domain started with the subscriber group ASSETS. Now that the process with this segment has been completed, exactly the same will be done with the group classified as SEMIACTIVES. So far, it had been excluded from the mailings, as the Warm Up process should be done gradually and priority should be given to the most engaged users.
On the other hand, at all times we will monitor and control the metrics to see that Hotmail deliverability is maintained and stabilised, having a positive impact on the Open Rate of the users who have this domain.
We will keep you informed about this new phase!
