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Introduction...........3
The Path to the Inbox......3
Measuring Inbox Placement.....4
Global Inbox Placement.5
Inbox Placement in North America....6
Inbox Placement in Latin America......7
Inbox Placement in Europe........8
Europe Inbox Placement by Country.......9 - 11
Inbox Placement in Asia-Pacifc..........12
Asia-Pacifc Inbox Placement by Country....13
Capturing Subscriber Level Deliverability....14
Global Inbox Placement at the Top Four Mailbox Providers......14
Inbox Placement Rate by Industry.......15
Methodology...........16
Learn More About Return Path.17
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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32018 Deliverability Benchmark Reportreturnpath
INTRODUCTION
The last 12 months were a busy time for email marketers. GDPR took efect May 25, requiring a thorough review of sending practices and
causing many to pare down their subscriber lists. Gmail and others made it easier for their users to unsubscribe from email lists, leading to
even further reductions in subscriber numbers. Yahoo and AOL consolidated their infrastructure under Verizon’s Oath umbrella. And Gmail
announced a new open platform and native support for AMP for Email, making emails more dynamic and interactive. While some of these have
created challenges, these changes may actually beneft email marketers over the long term.
Despite these seismic changes in the email space, overall deliverability is improving. Globally, inbox placement rose fve percentage points
compared to the previous 12 month period. While this trend is good news for email marketers, there’s more work to be done—15 percent of
emails still fail to reach the inbox.
In this year’s annual benchmark report, we take a look at how email gets delivered and how to measure inbox placement. We also explore the 12
month global, regional, and country inbox placement results, as well as inbox placement rates by industry and the top four mailbox providers.
GATEWAYSPAM FILTERINBOX
BLOCKNOSPAMNO
YESYES
SPAM FOLDERSTOP
THE PATH TO THE INBOX
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THE PATH TO THE INBOX
Geting to the inbox entails more than hiting the
send buton. Below is a representation of the flters
each message encounters on its journey.
Email that is deemed malicious or untrustworthy is
ofen blocked at the gateway, never reaching either
the inbox or the spam folder. For messages that
make it past the gateway, spam flters look at the
reputation of the sender, subscriber engagement,
and content to decide if they should be placed in the
inbox or the spam folder for each subscriber. Emails
that make it past both gateway and spam flters are
the only ones that reach the inbox.
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Both sets of data are valuable. However, because they use diferent inputs,
they provide diferent results. Specifcally, inbox placement rates calculated
with panel data do not factor in missing or blocked emails—so the resulting
inbox placement rate will always be higher. Here’s an example using our 2018
inbox placement averages:
As you can see, we would get a much diferent seed data result if we
eliminated blocked/missing emails from the calculation.
On the pages that follow, global and country specifc inbox placement rates
are calculated using seed data. We use seed data for these calculations
because it provides excellent coverage with global and regional mailboxes,
and allows us to capture information about missing and blocked email.
We measure mailbox provider and industry specifc inbox placement
rates using panel data. This data source provides a more complete view of
subscriber engagement with the diferent mailbox providers and industries,
and how it impacts inbox placement.
By using both seed and panel data, email marketers can get a clearer picture
of their deliverability, including how factors like individual blocking and
engagement fltering are impacting their inbox placement.
At Return Path, we use two diferent sets of data to calculate inbox placement—seed data and Consumer Network data (ofen called
“panel data”). Both of these data sources have their strengths and weaknesses, and each provides slightly diferent deliverability
numbers as a result of their diferent inputs. Using both together provides a more complete, holistic view of your deliverability.
Panel data:
More than 2 million active users
Measure engagement data
Only covers Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail
No missing/blocked emails
Seed data:
140+ global and regional mailbox providers
Measures missing/blocked emails
No engagement data
Smaller sample
MEASURING INBOX PLACEMENT
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Panel data shows placement results generated from real, actively managed
email accounts. Through our Consumer Network, we are able to gather
this real world email data and real world information about subscriber
engagement. For example, we can see if an email lands in the inbox or spam
folder, whether or not the subscriber reads the email, whether they report it as
spam, and many other hidden user behaviors.
Seed addresses are one of the original methods used to measure inbox
placement.Have you ever tested an email campaign’s deliverability by
sending it to your personal email address That’s similar to how seed
addresses work. But at Return Path, we have seed addresses at hundreds
of mailbox providers and flters around the world. When marketers send
email to these seed addresses, our sofware checks to see if it was
delivered and reports whether it went to the inbox or the spam folder.
Panel data Period Avg.
Global inbox placement rate91% (see p. 15)
Spam rate 9%
Missing/blocked rateN/A
Seed data Period Avg.
Global inbox placement rate85%
Spam rate 6%
Missing/blocked rate10%。。。