True or False: The Email Experience Matters!

The one channel that all highly successful businesses take advantage of is email.

While misused and abused for years, retailers, publishers and service providers are waking up from their virtual dreams and recognizing the myriad opportunities the email channel can provide throughout the customer journey. Not only is email infinitely trackable and measurable, but the return can also be immediate, making it an attractive option for those looking to increase awareness of new products and drive greater revenue within their enterprises. The problem, of course, is that most businesses aren't very good at the email experience.

Recent research from Return Path found that nearly 13 percent of emails sent by businesses in 2016 were deleted by recipients without being read. What's more, only 22 percent of emails analyzed by Return Path were read (opened, even if all images did not fully load) - the remainder were simply deleted immediately, directly filtered into SPAM folders, ignored or simply never reached their intended recipients.

These are disheartening statistics to say the least, so it is time 'Net professionals get serious. Test your knowledge of this essential marketing channel in this month's Quiz Time from Website Magazine (see the answers at the bottom of the page).

1. TRUE OR FALSE: DKIM is a form of email authentication in which a recipient identifies valid messages sent from a retailer by requesting a digital signature.

2. TRUE OR FALSE: An SPF is a type of domain name service (DNS) record that provides protection for domain holders to prevent spammers from using their domain to send spam emails and affect their sender reputation.

3. TRUE OR FALSE: An MX record is a resource record (possibly overseen by the Illuminati) in a DNS that states which mail server has responsibility over mail delivery, and the priority sequence of all host names within the same domain.

4. TRUE OR FALSE: A suppression list is a list of senders kept by individual recipients that prevents email from being delivered.

5. TRUE OR FALSE: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for email transmission.