In addition to response rates, PerfTech regularly monitors 1) subscriber reach and 2) delivery times of its in-browser messaging product, Bulletin System. We recently looked at a policy with a large recipient list to determine what percentage of targeted subscribers successfully received an in-browser message.
Reached versus Targeted
For our purposes, the term “reached” means that the designated message successfully displayed on the targeted subscriber’s device. The message associated with the policy we monitored related to an ISP’s updated “Terms and Conditions.” The ISP customer dynamically adds new and upgraded subscribers to the recipient list on an ongoing basis. Reach was analyzed for a typical 5-day delivery window for the past two calendar years. The percentage of subscribers reached versus targeted was as follows:
Targeted Reached
2016: 1,689,185 92.09%
2017: 1,413,949 89.25%
Factors that Influence Reach
Several factors contribute to the ability to reach a targeted subscriber with an in-browser message. Those factors that prevent reach during the campaign window, even though the subscriber is online, include:
- Not using a browser, such as when gaming or viewing video
- Browsing exclusively to encrypted sites and pages
- Having previously selected to opt out of the respective in-browser message category
- Browsing to sites that PerfTech’s platform bypasses, such as those that result in environments unfriendly to message frames
- Browsing to sites that the provider expressly wishes to bypass, such as their own
The factor that most enables reach is: - Bulletin System is persistent, and monitors every upstream HTTP request for an opportunity to deliver
Note that normally, it takes only one unencrypted page request to successfully deliver a message
Delivery Times to Reached Subscribers
In addition, among only “reached” deliveries, we further analyzed the length of time that passed before message delivery on the user’s device occurred. The number of events analyzed—across a variety of message use cases—at the same ISP for the calendar year 2016 was 17,000,029; for the calendar year 2017 was 20,009,943.
| Time | 2016 % Delivered | 2017 % Delivered |
| 1 min | 19.86% | 16.85% |
| 10 min | 39.01% | 32.76% |
| 30 min | 48.83% | 41.17% |
| 1 hr | 56.23% | 48.15% |
| 4 hr | 75.29% | 69.21% |
| 8 hr | 87.35% | 84.60% |
| 10 hr | 91.63% | 90.46% |
| 20 hr | 96.95% | 96.52% |
Note that from year to year, delivery times were slightly longer under the 8-hour mark. But by 10 hours, the delivery times began to even out, separated by only .43 of a percent at the 20-hour point.
In other words, of approximately 89.25% of subscribers reached from a targeted recipient list, 96.52% of those received the in-browser message within the first 20 hours of message launch. Compared to delivery statistics of other subscriber communication forms, in-browser messaging emerges as highly successful.