Email is a vital communications channel that helps to drive growth for those in ecommerce. It’s a crucial low cost way to deliver personalised communications that aids the selling of products and services, and also in building profitable ongoing relationships with customers.
Disposible emails are proliferating
However, retailers are facing issues using this channel as people increasingly set up disposable email addresses – with inboxes live for ten minutes to up to a few days. Worries about safeguarding their privacy, their email data being shared and wanting to avoid receiving ongoing marketing communications are the common reasons many are creating throwaway email addresses. Some are also attracted by the opportunity for trial offer abuse!
In various extreme examples it’s been estimated that 30 – 40 per cent of website signups in retail are using throwaway email addresses. But even when the majority of retailers are collecting fewer disposable emails than the worst case scenario, the number of throwaway emails is only going to increase.
This escalation in the use of disposable emails is backed up by a report from HTF Market Intelligence which predicts that the global disposable email tool market will grow by 14.6 per cent a year, reaching a market size of $1.02 billion by 2033.
Throwaway emails are very costly
This growing trend has significant consequences for retailers who experience poor customer email data quality, which results in a wasted marketing budget, due to the amount invested in customer acquisition, storing data and marketing activity targeted at customers. It also results in a constant decline in click throughs from email outreach campaigns.
Fake signups have a big impact on corrupting business intelligence, as funnel metrics for purchase and signups are skewed, along with A/B testing, which can lead to flawed decision making.
Then there’s the issue of disposable emails used for trial abuse – essentially fraud. It’s estimated that about 20 per cent of ‘new’ signups to promotional campaigns are returning customers using disposable emails to take advantage of first time user discounts.
Furthermore, with throwaway emails you have no idea of the real identity behind the fake email account, prompting significant security concerns and potentially encouraging wider fraudulent activity. In fact, email addresses created a few days before a transaction are believed to be 25 times more likely to be fraudulent.
One of the biggest problems with disposable email addresses is that they can drive up bounce rates from email campaigns, which can destroy the sender’s reputation. Internet and email service providers like Gmail and Yahoo penalise high bounce rates. Often, if that rate hits five per cent emails from the sender are likely to go straight to spam folders, or are even blocked, which is very costly for retailers.
Avoid damaging relationships with legitimate customers
Bear in mind that a blanket ban on all emails that could be deemed disposable can harm legitimate users, so make sure that you have an intelligent email classification and defence process in place. This means monitor for alias addressing and privacy relay forwarding – the latter is an email service offered by Apple that people use to protect their identity – as these may be set up by genuine customers. Remember that the goal isn’t to just block emails, but build trust in your data, sender reputation and customer communications.
A four layer defence system is necessary
For effective protection against disposable emails and to gain insight into the email addresses being provided, the best approach is to deliver a four layer defence system.
Firstly, start by stopping bad data at the door. The most cost effective action is preventing disposable emails from entering your systems in the first place. Therefore, implement real time email verification with a global reach that validates email syntax, domain activity and disposable risk in milliseconds at the onboarding stage. It must be able to instantly reject known email address throwaways, and flag privacy relay and alias emails for monitoring before a purchase or signup information is accepted.
This process is so much better than undertaking manual checks and using static blocklists for email verification. Not only is a manual approach more costly, time consuming and liable to human error, but it can’t keep up with evolving threats.
Secondly, clean existing customer email address data, because most retailers will already have disposable or expired emails in their databases. Therefore, implement bulk email verification of CRM and marketing lists to identify invalid, risky and disposable addresses in real time. Doing so often reduces bounce rates dramatically.
Thirdly, enforce friction in the signup process, where necessary, without damaging the user experience. This can take place via using double opt-in confirmation emails sent after the initial signup process. It separates real users from those with disposable inboxes that will expire before verification is possible. Also, monitor user behaviour by pairing email verification with fraud indicators to identify, for example, rapid form submissions from single IPs.
Lastly, maintain ongoing email data hygiene because data decays rapidly over time, with contact data quality on customer databases deteriorating at around 25 per cent a year. Therefore, schedule regular reverification of emails and monitor engagement proactively. For example, suppress email addresses that never open or click across multiple campaigns.
In summary
Retailers need an automated, global, intelligent real time email verification service that adapts quickly as email abuse tactics evolve and the disposable email service market expands. This way they can ensure that email is always a trusted, high performing growth asset, and avoid the costly damage disposable emails can inflict on their business.
The post Why Disposable Emails Are the Scourge of Ecommerce and How to Stop Them appeared first on 365 Retail – Retail News and Events.
