New Email Deliverability Solution Tracks Customer-Level Data Across Platforms

“Ever since there’s been the concept of deliverability tracking, we’ve been doing it via seed list,” says Deirdre Baird, Founder & CEO, Pivotal Veracity. “The challenge with that is that ISPs are altering the way that they do spam filtering. They’re looking much more at how individual customers interact with emails.”

Using seed lists to measure deliverability, marketers have used samples composed of about 10 email addresses per ISP. The mailer would then have to rely on this directional non-customer data to guesstimate their actual deliverability to thousands or millions of real customers.

Baird says the industry has missed this particular critical level of filtering that now supersedes all other levels of filtering at the ISP, and the key element of MailboxIQ offers a more effective alternative solution to deliverability tracking.

Changing the Email Game
In addition to tracking inbox and spam folder placement, MailboxIQ is designed to provide senders the ability to identify which emails are being actively moved by their customers to personal folders and/or the trash folder. It is also designed to identify other critical reputation metrics, such as which customers add the sender to their address book, report their message as spam, and/or forward the message using their email client.

The insight provides visibility into where deliverability issues exist so that marketers address those critical factors. Baird says this puts marketers in a better position to change what you’re doing before email gets blocked.

Multi-Channel Analytics
MailboxIQ’s deliverability and reputation intelligence is further enhanced with direct tracking of which email clients (i.e. Lotus Notes, Hotmail, Outlook, iPhone, MySpace) and platforms (mobile, social networks, Web clients) the customer is using to access and/or share the email with friends and colleagues. This allows marketers to strategically improve the recipient’s experience by optimizing their design and content to match the unique platform preferences of each customer as well as identify their own social influencers.

“There’s this strange convergence between platforms and email clients and email is playing a bigger role than ever before in terms of reaching customers in a variety of new ways, and most mailers have no real insight into that,” says Baird.

“With MailboxIQ, it’s easier than ever to identify everything from which of your subscribers are ‘Road Warriors’ who are always checking out your messages on their Blackberry and iPhone, to which are most frequently sharing your offers with their friends on Facebook and Twitter,” says Baird. “You can find out who your biggest email brand advocates are and leverage this intelligence and interactivity to drive even greater customer engagement and more revenue from future campaigns.”

MailboxIQ can be accessed through a secure online portal and is designed to work in conjunction with email service providers and marketing automation platforms. Customers also have the option to use Pivotal Veracity’s secure API to download MIQ results for match-back to customer files and integration with triggered marketing campaigns.

Since Pivotal Veracity works with about 40 top-tier ESPs for deliverability and rendering already, Baird says the MailboxIQ solution should start coming out for the ISPs. “

Baird says the ESPs have been able to collect detailed customer data due to their sophistication, and the MailboxIQ solution would be an excellent supplement. “The ESPs see the power in this, the only question is going to be where can they fit this in on their development calendar,” says Baird. “But marketers should expect it to come.” Baird reinforces the sentiment for some of the key marketing automation providers as well.

“[The solution is] a complete review of platforms and email client preferences that helps you market better and understand how email is driving behavior across these different channels, and then, of course, how to use that information at a customer level to be able to engage your customers in new and different ways,” says Baird.