In a recent report released by Jupiter Media, analysts reported that ISPs and spam filters are currently responsible for erroneous blockages of 17% of permission emails that should be getting through.
Since many ISPs report only a 2% error rate I decided to write to David Daniels, the research director responsible for the report, to see if he could address the disparity. I also asked him about what small businesses could do to avoid being blocked erroneously.
GF: How did you come up with 17% as the number of erroneously blocked emails?
DD: We conducted interviews with a variety of e-mail marketing executives, e-mail service providers and ISPs in the course of this research. Those interviews indicated that the false positive issue – while varying by ISP – was far from any claim of 98% accuracy.
We believe this has as much to do with the filtering technologies and consumer behavior as it does with e-mail marketers own practices – such as using words and phrases that would trip a filter.
The 17% number was in part based on these interviews but also on the tracking services provided by Return Path. http://www.returnpath.biz/ Return Path monitors permission e-mail delivery rates across a dozen or so ISPs and reports the blocked rates. Their last tracking in Q3 2003 found the average blocked number was 17% (some ISPs were much higher, some were lower).
In Q3 of 2003 we also conducted our own study by opting into 50 or the top retailers e-mail campaigns. There we too found that 17% of their e-mail was marked as spam, landing in our bulk folders.
GF: The recommendations in your press release seem targeted towards large senders. Do you have any advice for small businesses?
DD: Smaller businesses can adopt many of the same tactics as large businesses, such as the third party trusted service provider programs.
A good first step would be to conduct a deliverability audit to determine the extent of the issue. This can be done by seeding the mailing with accounts at the major ISPs or by working with an email service provider or a company that specializes in such audits such as Return Path.
SenderBase.org is also a wonderful free tool that allows marketers to see if their IP addresses are getting blacklisted and by whom.
Garrett French is the editor of murdok’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.
