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Webbula Real Value

Email Hygiene Services

Email is not dead, in fact, it continues to grow in importance every year. Marketers are utilizing and relying on the speed, personalization, customization and targeting that email affords them more and more every day. But sending successful and effective email campaigns requires time to plan, create, and manage. No matter the size or your company, those resources – that investment – demands a solid return. And that is a lot of pressure on email marketing.

With 2018 coming to an end, companies, departments, and agencies are already starting to plan their budgets for 2019. As email marketers, you are hopefully already utilizing an email verification and/or email hygiene services for your email data. If you aren’t, then you should really consider adding such a service to your 2019 marketing budgets. For those of you who are curious about learning more about your email data, let’s move on to the BIG question that email marketers ask all the time…

What is the REAL tangible value (ROI) on using email hygiene services to clean up their email data?

Some stakeholders might think, “If it ain’t broke why fix it”? But most savvy marketing professionals who understand the effort it takes to run a successful email campaign are thinking, “I can’t afford to wait to have it break and then fix it, so I need to be proactive – but where do I start? Who do I go with”? Whatever camp you happen to belong to, this article is written for you. Together we will learn why applying both Email Hygiene and Email Verification early will not only help grow your revenues – but help you avoid problems that can turn your investment – into a nightmare.

Verification is Simply Not Enough

If you find yourself cruising the internet for information on verification providers, and you came across Webbula, then you are starting off in the right place. As the industry leader Webbula does things a little differently than your basic verification provider. First of all, it’s important to understand that a lot of verification’s ability to detect bounces is being hampered due to Verizon’s Oath decision to turn off verification for Yahoo, Verizon, AOL and other email services that they own. Due to this change, a lot of verification providers are now using the term “validation” to try and confuse potential customers. (Read more about Verizon’s Oath changes in a recent Editorial series from Vince Cersosimo, CEO of Webbula Part 1, Part 2). But don’t be fooled, verification or validation or whatever it is being called today – is still not enough to tackle the enormity of potential email threats you are facing. Fortunately, there is a purpose-built and time-tested solution that works – Webbula cloudHygiene has the power to detect and identify threats that others simply can’t – with the powerful combination of Email Verification and Multi-Method Email Hygiene.

A simple verification or validation test only detects bounces, greylistings, and typos – but Webbula Email Hygiene can detect and identify dangerous deliverable threats like spam traps, bots, moles, disposable domains, and more that don’t bounce and are just waiting to injure your sender reputation. (Read our recent intelligence report, “What’s Hiding in your Email lists”? to learn more about these threats). It’s important to note that other providers may say they use Email Hygiene, but it is simply little more than a verification and validation test. What makes Webbula different is the power of Multi-Method Email Hygiene, which includes over 30+ customizable filters and the bundled power of both Verification and Email Hygiene detection. If you’re satisfied with only being able to detect valid and invalid emails then verification might be enough for you, but if you’re ready to be proactive and learn more about the emails you are acquiring – then it’s time to get serious and rely on the world’s greatest email threat detection solution.

Great, you’re probably thinking, that was a lot of marketing talk. Let’s say I believe all of that, but why do I even need to do this to my list anyway? What is the harm if I don’t? Is it even worth the additional investment? Let’s try to minimize the marketing language and talk straight about the nuts and bolts. And then back it up with some extremely recent third-party research. How’s that sound?

Q: What is the Return On Investment with Multi-Method Email Hygiene and Verification

A: Email marketers utilizing multi-method email hygiene and verification outperformed those email marketers that did not utilize these tactics. Those who harnessed the power of multi-method email hygiene and verification enjoyed higher delivery, open, click, and conversion rates, as well as an email Average Order Value (AOV) that was 3.9 percent higher.

The Relevancy Group (TRG) said that. Not us. They reported that quote along with an entire paper to back it all up in a recent research paper entitled, “The Power of Email Verification and Multi-Method Email Hygiene”. You can download a FREE copy of their report by clicking on this link. Read it for yourself, it is rather eye-opening.

The Problem

When marketers were asked if they were using verification and hygiene methods in the TRG Report, they found that most were not doing enough, with some not even planning for it in their marketing budgets. The report clearly shows how much of a problem this can be due to overall deliverability rates trending downward over the past three years, dropping in the second half of 2018 to 87 percent.

The reason for such low deliverability rates is because of the consumer and corporate inbox providers having their hands full defending the number of fake emails that flood their servers on a daily basis. And while a lot of these providers have their own ways of identifying malicious attacks, the filters they use to protect recipients often result in false positives. Good messages ended up being blocked, sent to the bulk folder, or quarantined in such a way as to render them virtually inaccessible to end-users, who expect and rely upon getting their emails.

The Solution

In order to help improve your deliverability rates the answer is obviously to combine verification and hygiene. The results speak for themselves. Verification is a necessary tactic to ensure that your email addresses are valid, but it is an incomplete defense. Webbula gives you more intelligence than simple Yes/No/Unknown answers. cloudHygiene delivers a complete picture of your data, providing you the data intelligence you need to make informed decisions. (See picture below)

A flow diagram describing how verification and email hygiene differ. Verification simply identifies bounces. Email hygiene looks for reputation threats, fraud threats, delivery threats, and conversion threats in email marketing campaigns.

The Results 

After conducting their research in June 2018, The Relevancy Group concluded that those using both verification and hygiene simply outperformed those who did not. Marketers doing so have a 38 percent higher email marketing monthly revenue than those who chose not to use this tactic. This equated to approximately $2 million additional dollars in monthly revenue in the study group. It turns out that email hygiene isn’t a cost center at all – but rather a profit center.

As already mentioned above, marketers will benefit from a higher delivery, click, and conversion rates, as well as an email Average Order Value (AOV) that was 3.9 percent higher.

As of June 2018 Marketers using this tactic:

  • Are getting more out of the larger send: Those who are taking advantage of this tactic had larger monthly send sizes. Both verification and hygiene deliver a higher quality audience and end with a positive delivery and engagement can mail at a higher frequency.
  • Improved Delivery: Those who choose this route had a deliverability rate that was 1.27 percent higher than those that did not utilize this tactic.
  • Increased Engagement: Open and click-through rates for senders with a data quality mind were on average about one and a quarter to one and three quarters above those operating without hygiene.
  • The AOV Increased: The mean AOV overall was $137.21 or 3.9 percent higher for those who embraced data quality.

To read the full report visit now: The Power of Email Verification and Multi-Method Email Hygiene

Be sure to also check out and download the helpful Infographic provided below which shows you how to measure ROI.

And then sign up for a FREE Trial with our email hygiene service and let us walk you thru the results.