Embargoed until Tuesday Feb 16th
EMAIL DATA SOURCE UNVEILS NEW SERVICE RATING THE REACH AND INBOX DELIVERY RATE OF EMAIL
MARKETERS AND PUBLISHERS.
2/16/2010: Email Data Source, the leading provider of competitive intelligence for email and digital
messaging, announced today a new service that shows the reach of email campaigns and provides data
on the inbox deliverability of major email marketers. The new service will be provided as an add-on to
Email Analyst, EDS’s email and social media analytics tool.
“For the first time ever, marketers will be able to see how their brands fit into the competitive
landscape when it comes to the reach of their marketing messages and placement into the inbox,” said
Bill McCloskey, Founder and Chairman of Email Data Source. “This new data will clearly demonstrate
which brands, agencies, and vendors are at the top of their game and which aren’t when it comes to
digital marketing. “
Campaign Reach refers to the percentage of active email inboxes that receive an email message. Inbox
Deliverability refers to the percentage of emails actually being delivered to the inbox versus the spam
folder. Whereas other services provide metrics on the percentage of email blocked by a specific ISP
such as Yahoo or AOL, determining where a message goes once it is delivered has been difficult, if not
impossible, for marketers to determine.
Together, these two metrics bring a new degree of accuracy to list size and inbox placement that was
never available before. Using the new service, marketers will be able to see the reach and inbox
delivery of all of their email messages, broken out by ISP such as Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail as well as how
they compare, on a campaign by campaign basis, with the reach and inbox delivery of their direct
competitors.
The service will also help marketers evaluate email partners and vendors. Up until now there has been
no independent service that has provided audience measurement for email. With Email Data Source’s
new service, media planners will get independent verification of a publisher’s email reach and
deliverability into the inbox. Brands will have an independent resource to verify their effective reach and
inbox deliverability and be able to benchmark against competitors.
As an example, EDS did a recent study examining the Email Reach and Inbox Deliverability for the New
York Times, LA Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post during the first three weeks of January,
2010. The New York Times scored highest in both areas with a reach of 4,500 per million active email
accounts and an average of 96% delivery to the inbox (meaning approximate 4% of their emails were
delivered to the spam folder). The Washington Post had a reach of 3,400 per million and 96% inbox
delivery. USA Today had a lower reach of 1,000 per million but a slightly higher deliverability rate of
97%. The LA Times had the lowest reach, with only 300 active email accounts per million and a 92%
deliverability rate.
With the new capabilities of Email Analyst, marketers can also gain insight into the services of email
vendors. One such service, Goodmail Systems’s Certified Email program, which helps ensure a high
deliverability rate for email campaigns, did in fact show 100% deliverability on campaigns examined by
Email Data Source. Goodmail System’s VP of Product Management reacted as follows:
"Goodmail welcomes Email Data Source's new service. After reviewing the first report, it has been proven
yet again that a significant number of emails are still landing in the spam folders. We are pleased that the
report found our CertifiedEmail senders reaching 100% inbox delivery.”
The new EDS service also provides insights into how email marketers segment their lists and test subject
lines. As an example, data from the first 3 weeks in January clearly showed Neiman-Marcus segmenting
their list by geography, sending unique campaigns to email subscribers in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los
Angeles, Washington, D.C and the Tri-State area, with the reach to the Houston and Atlanta addresses
being approximately half the size of their other targeted email campaigns.
“Email is too significant a marketing channel to not be covered by an independent rating service,” said
Carter Nicholas, CEO of Email DataSource. “Other online media have Nielsen and comScore to report on
audience using a broad data set and validate the statistics provided by industry members. This is long
overdue for email. This will be the first time that marketers will have all the data in one place to
evaluate their email programs, their agencies, their media buys, their vendors, and their competition.”
Founded in 2003, Email Data Source, Inc is the worldwide leader in competitive intelligence on digital
marketing messages. The company provides competitive intelligence products for interactive digital
marketers, publishers, and service providers.
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For more information: Bill McCloskey, 212-696-0385, bill@emaildatasource.com