Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

We recieved this alert form MarketingSherpa concering BellSouth. After verifying the issue through our ReturnPath account, we switched every BellSouth address on our internal list to text and delivered just fine.

Alert: Use Text-Only if You’re Emailing BellSouth Names

This story was part of the EmailSherpa newsletter from MarketingSherpa

This is a must-read if you are emailing to BellSouth addresses. Just this week, we at MarketingSherpa learned that around 400 of our newsletter subscribers who use BellSouth haven’t been receiving our emails.

Evidently, the ISP modified its filtering system in January — because, after suspecting something was fishy with our recent open rates, we ran a series of tests with our ESP, ExactTarget, and discovered that text-only messages were the ONLY types getting through. In fact, not even emails being converted from HTML to text with a multipart MIME detecting system will land in a BellSouth inbox.

So, you need to immediately do what we did: get on the phone with your ESP to segment your BellSouth customers and start sending them text-only.

What else does this small-but-useful story tell us? First, you cannot rely solely on your deliverability reports — because they really only tell you about hard bounces. Click this hotlink for charts chock full of deliverability info: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/images/bg-b2b-delivery.gif

Plus, marketers should regularly check their open rates for unusual clusters of un-opens from the same ISP. Don’t look at only your Yahoos, AOLs and Gmails, but also addresses going through regional providers, such as BellSouth, Cablevision, Adelphia, Comcast, etc. It’s worth noting that ExactTarget informed us that we weren’t their only client who has been slowed by the BellSouth bug.

“You need to conduct inbox audits at least monthly to determine if there are hidden issues below the surface, especially with ISPs that make up a smaller percentage of your subscriber lists,” says Chip House, VP, Email Optimization Services, ExactTarget.

Marketers who have geographically segmented files should know that BellSouth provides Internet service in the following states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

And while BellSouth was recently acquired by AT&T, no indication has been made whether one of their email systems will umbrella customers for both brands. However, with AT&T’s reach in critical markets such as San Francisco/Oakland, it’s worth keeping a close eye on — just in case the BellSouth filter all of the sudden becomes the company standard.