European ISPs and ESPs Beat US Counterparts in Permission-Based E-mail Deliverability Rates, Finds Lyris
Thursday, 29 June 2006
Lyris Technologies, subsidiary of J.L. Halsey and provider of e-mail marketing solutions, announced that although the combined average rate of gross and inbox e-mail deliverability of permission-based e-mail marketing messages for US and European ISPs and ESPs stayed constant from Q4 2005 to Q1 2006 (achieving a rate of 89 percent and 86 percent respectively), gross (i.e. overall) deliverability rates for European providers outstripped their US counterparts.
European ISPs achieved an impressive 94 percent, while US ISPs’ average gross deliverability went down 6 percent from the previous quarter, to 86 percent deliverability.
US ISPs and ESPs fared even worse in terms of inbox delivery — their rate went down to 82 percent compared to European inbox delivery rates of 94 percent. The incidence of false-positive spam filtering is also higher in the US., with 7.7 percent of valid messages getting blocked, compared to 3.5 percent in Europe.
“Although deliverability rates can be affected by a sender's content, mailing history, list hygiene, and other factors, our customers’ compliance with ISP policies and the maintenance of positive ISP relations helps to ensure maximum e-mail delivery,” states Dave Dabbah, Director of Sales & Marketing at Lyris. “No matter how professional your e-mail marketing efforts are, some things just aren't under your control. E-mail deliverability at Internet Service Providers is at the top of that list.”
Lyris also found the following:
- Users with addresses with one of the top ten US providers were 38 percent more likely to receive their opt-in e-mail in their inbox than those who used one of the bottom ten providers (97.4 versus 59.4 percent).
- Two newcomers to the list of top ten US domains in Q4 (Knology.net and Mac.com) were outpaced in Q1 ‘06, which saw three new additions to the list: AOL, CNC, and Netscape, with AOL coming in at fourth. CNC improved their deliverability by 2 percent to reach seventh place on the list, while Netscape joined the list by improving their deliverability by 5 percent.
- False-positive filtering remains high among Gmail, Hotmail, and CNC. Gmail had reduced their false-positive filtering over the course of 2005, but saw a dramatic increase in Q1 ’06, filtering 44 percent of e-mails.
- Hotmail’s false positive filtering also continues to increase, from 15.7 in Q4 to 23.4 in Q1 ‘06. CNC’s rate actually decreased by 6 percent compared to Q4.
- At 97.1 percent, inbox deliverability for the top ten European providers was comparable to that of US providers.
- From a period beginning January 1, 2006 and ending March 31, 2006, the Lyris EmailAdvisor service monitored the full delivery trajectories of 55,717 production-level, permission-based e-mail marketing messages (non-discussion) sent from 57 different businesses and non-profit organizations to multiple accounts at 39 ISP and ESP domains in the United States and Europe.
Messages were chosen to represent a cross-section of legitimate publishing activities. Examples of e-mail publications monitored by the study include a daily e-mail guide for local shopping, dining, and cultural events, a weekly newsletter from a luxury travel company, and a monthly newsletter on health and wellness. Retail publishers included a national electronics retailer, an online bookseller, and an online specialty shopping site, among many others.
In all cases, the recipients to which the publications were sent had made an explicit "opt-in" request to receive the messages at the specified e-mail addresses.
The term "gross deliverability" refers to the total number of messages delivered to the e-mail inbox and bulk folders, combined, divided by the total number of messages sent. The term "inbox deliverability" refers to the total number of messages delivered specifically to the inbox, divided by the total number of messages sent.
All opt-in e-mail marketing messages (non-discussion) were sent by established commercial and non-profit organizations and met Lyris' best practice standards for e-mail marketing (i.e. accurate headers, accurate "From" and "Subject" lines, accurate/active reply addresses, full contact and unsubscribe information included in every message).