Mark Griswold, VP and CIO, The Blue Book Network

The Importance of “Deliverability” in Your Project Communication

Effective and successful project management relies on timely and effective communication. Anyone managing a project must not only be able to respond quickly to inquiries and requests for information from project participants, but also be smart communicators in their own right.

We all get hit minute-to-minute with more messaging than any human can possibly process. Whether on our smart phones, computers or tablets, our inboxes are brimming to the brink with information and requests—some useful and some not so much. Think about it, though. If your inbox is bursting, then so is that of your customer or potential sub. The question for the construction professional is how to knock down those virtual walls to improve your bid response and find the subs you need to get your project done. We can all understand the value of connectivity and communication, but a message is only valuable if it reaches its designated target and gets you the desired result.

While email technology has made it easy to send messages to more people with a single click, these same delivery channels have become clogged with spam and junk messages. This has made it more difficult for you to get the attention of and response from your recipients. Whether seeking bids or that critical face-to-face meeting, it’s never been more important to make sure your message is getting through.

​Effective and successful project management relies on timely and effective communication.

Measuring whether or not your messages are received is called “Deliverability.” Companies that don’t address this growing concern can expect certain consequences:

• Skipped, missed or miscommunications with contractors and suppliers can directly result in lost projects and lost profits.
• Legal action and fines can occur when messages are viewed as spam.
• Annoyed recipients have the ability to ban all future communications through blocks and spam reports.
• Your company can actually get blacklisted by major delivery systems and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), affecting all future communication.

Because marketing professionals have often used this medium to deliver unsolicited messages, corporate IT departments and ISPs developed spam filters and auto junk filters in order to filter sent messages.

The more those companies try to bypass these filters, the stricter the filters get and the worse the deliverability challenge becomes for everyone. The major email ISPs now look at and calculate the sender’s reputation, which is determined by the number of factors—messages sent, the number of bad addresses and the number of recipients reporting your message as spam.. Your reputation determines whether your mail gets delivered to the inbox or the junk folder. Sending 100 to 1,000 emails as a “project blast” can be detrimental to your reputation and future communication efforts.

Before you continue your project communication efforts, examine your current process to ensure that you are being as effective as you can be.

Some Questions to Ask:

• Is someone monitoring the number of messages sent or your response rate?
• Are you getting the desired response from your existing system?

• Are you analyzing the cost and effect of unsent messages (bad email), “bounce backs” and undeliverable messages and unread messages placed in junk or spam folders?

The Blue Book Network’s new software systems—www.ONETEAM.build and www.BuildingBlok.com—can help. Our network of engaged commercial owners, architects, contractors and suppliers can improve your deliverability and the effectiveness of all of your project communications.

The Blue Book Network employs industry best practices and utilizes delivery methods that take into account “deliverability measurable.” We have built relationships with the top email ISPs so that all emails sent from our Network make their way to your recipient’s inbox. The Blue Book Network continues to be the industry’s premier vendor communication system, allowing you to stay focused on building relationships, not simply on “messaging.”

Interesting Statistics:

• B2B subscribers are twice as likely to consider email “spam” if it comes “too frequently.”

The Blue Book Network realizes the importance of the effectiveness of your message rather than the quantity. Our messaging platforms allow you to focus on the “Who” of messaging, not the “How.”

• 31 percent of B2B email addresses will change this year.

The Blue Book Network can help you keep your vendor database up to date, reduce the number of “undeliverable” messages and increase your response rate.

• Inbox providers such as Gmail, Yahoo and AOL all use the percentage of people who hit “report spam” for a particular sender as the number one factor for determining whether or not to deliver incoming email.

By taking advantage of The Blue Book Network’s knowledge of “Deliverability,” you can minimize the risk of your messages being labeled as “spam.”

Bottom line—make sure your company is examining “Deliverability” and consider The Blue Book Network to help expedite your project communication as well as protect it.