Study finds 18% of invited e-mail lands in junk folders

Story posted: April 23, 2008 - 12:24 pm EDT
BtoB Online

Emeryville, Calif.—One of every five permission-based e-mail messages sent to U.S.-based ISPs lands in the junk mail folder, according to an e-mail deliverability study by Lyris, an e-mail marketing and online marketing technology company.

The Lyris HQ ISP Deliverability Report Card for Q4 2007 was based on monitoring deliverability rates for 436,558 permission-based e-mail marketing messages sent from 69 different businesses to multiple accounts at 59 ISP domains between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31.

The ISP with the highest inbox delivery rate was AIM.com, with 93% of delivered messages landing in the inbox. RoadRunner SoCal was second at 92%. Hotmail was second from the bottom, with only 57% of its delivered messages reaching the inbox.

“These are messages that have been invited by the recipients, and yet so many of them still aren’t making it to the inbox,” said Blaine Mathieu, senior VP-marketing at Lyris, in a statement. “ISPs base much of their delivery decisions on a sender’s reputation, and that reputation is governed primarily by how often that sender’s recipients click the ‘Report as Spam’ button for its messages. Marketers can improve delivery by better managing their relationships with their subscribers to reduce those spam button clicks.”

—Carol Krol