An average of 20.5% of permission-based e-mails in the second half of 2005 either ended up in recipients’ junk mail folders or didn’t get delivered, according Return Path.
Also, 73.4% of consumers surveyed by Return Path said they have had e-mail they wanted to receive either end up in their junk folders or go missing, the e-mail service provider reported.
“Though things have gotten a little better, delivery remains a problem,” said George Bilbrey, vice president and general manager of Return Path Delivery Solutions.
Also, business-to-business e-mail has even higher non-delivery rates than business-to-consumer e-mail, according to Return Path.
Top corporate filters MessageLabs, Postini and Brightmail had 30.5%, 24% and 21.5% non-delivery rates, respectively, in the second half of 2005, the company reported.
“In the B-to-B environment, based on these samples, there appears to be a higher non-delivery rate,” said Bilbrey. He added it may be because corporate e-mail administrators don’t have access to feedback from mailbox holders the way consumer ISPs do.
“The ISPs take false positives very seriously,” said Bilbrey. “They’ve got all sorts of different people that are subscribers to their service, so they are probably less aggressive than a corporate administrator who is making his decisions somewhat in a vacuum.”
The good news, however, is that 56.6% of consumers surveyed by Return Path said they have added at least four corporate domains to their personal address books to make sure e-mail from those companies gets delivered. Another 16.7% added between one and three domains to their address books, according to Return Path.
“A lot of that is the product of a lot of hard work by marketers to educate people on how to use the address book,” said Bilbrey.
The average non-delivery rate in the second half of 2005 was down slightly from 21% in the first half of 2005, and down still more from 22% in 2004, according to Return Path.
Delivery rates reportedly vary widely among ISPs. Excite had the highest non-delivery rate, with 42.9% of permission-based e-mail either blocked or filtered in the second half of 2005, Return Path reported.
Gmail, Lycos and Adelphia came in second, third and fourth worst, with 40.4%, 33.8% and 31% non-delivery rates, respectively, according to Return Path.
Earthlink had the best delivery rate with 7.8% of permission-based e-mail blocked or filtered, according to Return Path. Mac.com, Compuserve and USA.net came in second, third and fourth best with non-delivery rates of 8.1%, 9.4% and 9.9%, respectively, according to Return Path.
The company said it analyzed 117,761 e-mail campaigns for the study.
