Return Path Reports on E-mail Blocking and Filtering
Thursday, 06 April 2006
Return Path, Inc. analyzed 117,761 campaigns sent by new clients using its Delivery Assurance Mailbox Monitor tool between July and December 2005 to determine the non-delivery rate at 28 ISPs and the top three corporate filtering systems. Nondelivered e-mail is defined as e-mail that either is delivered to the junk mail folder or is not delivered at all.
How the ISPs fare
Delivery rates for permission-based commercial e-mail vary widely by ISP based on their particular filtering algorithms. The ISPs with the lowest incidence of blocking and filtering were Earthlink, Mac.com, Compuserve, and USA.net -- all with fewer than 10 percent. The ISPs with the highest blocking and filtering rates were Excite (42.9 percent), Gmail (40.4 percent), Lycos (33.8 percent) and Adelphia (31 percent).
The rate of permission-based e-mail that did not get delivered to the Inbox as intended during the second half of 2005 improved to 20.5 percent, down slightly from 21 percent over the first half of the year, 22 percent in 2004 and 18.7 percent in 2003.
About Return Path Delivery Assurance Solutions
Return Path helps permissioned companies get more e-mail into the inbox, improving e-mail ROI and response rates. Its delivery monitoring tools and expert resolution teams combine to help companies identify and resolve e-mail delivery issues quickly. For more information on how Return Path can help your company, please visit www.returnpath.biz.
What Consumers Say
While blocking and filtering numbers have improved slightly over the past year, consumers still feel the effects. According to a February survey run by Return Path’s market research division, Authentic Response, 73.4 percent say they have had e-mail they wanted to receive end up in the junk folder or go missing all together. Perhaps surprisingly, 56.7 percent have done something about this by adding at least four corporate domains to their personal address books to help ensure inbox delivery. Another 16.7 percent added between one and three domains.
Consumers receive a lot of non-personal e-mail – with 60.7 percent getting more than 50 such e-mails per week. With those volumes, it is imperative that marketers make their e-mails relevant if they hope to get read and delivered.
Methodology
Return Path conducted this study by monitoring 2005 data from its Mailbox Monitor service. This study tracks the delivery, blocking and filtering rates for 117,761 campaigns that used the Mailbox Monitor seed list system. For each campaign, Return Path recorded whether the e-mail was missing, received in the Inbox or filtered to the junk/spam folder.