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EmailAdvisor: Report Card ISP Deliverability…
Tags: authentication, bell south, bulk folder, content filter, credibility, delivery rates, earthlink, executive summary, gmail, hotmail, isps, junk mail, legitimate messages, marketers, peoplepc, permission based email, policy framework, sbc, spectrum, stake,Pages: 5
Language: english
Created: Tue Aug 28 13:32:57 2007
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EmailAdvisor: Report Card
ISP Deliverability Report Card
Q2 2007
Executive Summary
For the first time, Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authentication is affecting delivery of legitimate
messages from email marketers. This discovery comes as a result of the Q2 2007 EmailAdvisor
study which tests more than 436,000 production-level, permission-based messages sent via ISP
domains in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. While SPF authentication is designed
to keep junk mail out of inboxes, many marketers aren't maintaining their records. The result is
decreased inbox delivery rates.
According to the study, marketers sending permission-based emails to U.S.-based ISPs still land
in the junk/bulk folder almost 16 percent of the time. XO Concentric far exceeds any other ISP
banishing 56 percent of invited email to the junk/bulk folder. SBC Global and Bell South both
junk 30 percent of permission-based email, while Yahoo! hit 26 percent. MSN Network, GMail and
Hotmail all landed at 18 percent. Rounding out the top ten were PeoplePC, USA and Earthlink. At
the other end of the spectrum, AOL only delivered 1.94 percent to the junk/bulk folder. European
ISPs saw more than 20 percent of permission-based emails in the junk/bulk folder tripling last
quarter's figures.
But most surprising was the appearance of SPF authentication checks in the list of the top ten
content triggers that ISPs check. It's the first time SPF checks have appeared in the content filter
tests, signaling to marketers that it's time to double check their records to ensure accuracy.
Sender Credibility is at Stake
Failing an SPF check carries a heavy penalty 2.6 points from the current SpamAssassin test
(a Bayesian scale that identifies a message as spam when it reaches 3.0 points or higher). The
penalty is more than twice that of any of the other top ten spam triggers identified.
SPF checks compare the sender's return path domain and the IP address to a list of approved IPs
the sender includes in their DNS zone. The company in charge of a domain must keep the list of
approved IPs up to date. A common but easily rectified reason for failing an SPF check is when
a company changes IP addresses or email service providers, but doesn't update its SPF records.
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Deliverability Comparison by Country
Percent Delivered
Comparison of Average Delivery Statistics by Country
In this quarter, gross delivery and inbox delivery among Percent Inbox
Percent Junk/Bulk
European ISPs inched downward to match U.S. 100.00
90.00
rates, while Canadian ISPs surged ahead of all other
80.00
receivers. Marketers sending to U.S.-based ISPs still
70.00
have to contend with heavy junk/bulk folder delivery, of 60.00
almost 16% on average for permission-based mailings. 50.00
89.96
86.09
83.60
83.38
76.83
75.49
74.04
74.09
40.00
30.00
20.00
20.44
15.94
13.13
10.61
10.00
0.00
United States Europe Canada Australia
United States 1 Top Ten US Domains
by Gross Deliverability
Rank ISP Name Percent
· Of the 25 U.S. ISPs reported on, several of the
Delivered
leading consumer ISPs rank in the top 10 of highest
1 AIM.com 96.65
junk/bulk folder delivery including Yahoo (4th), Gmail 2 XO Concentric 93.25
(6th), and Hotmail (7th). Still absent from the top 10 3 USA 92.98
is AOL which ranked 13th on the list with only 1.9% 4 Verizon 92.95
of email being delivered to the junk/bulk folder. 5 SBC Global 91.18
6 Yahoo! 90.14
· While average gross deliverability is around 83.6% 7 IWon 89.53
for permission-based marketers, all of the top 10 8 Google Mail 89.06
ISPs delivered more than 87% of email received. 9 PeoplePC 88.60
The lowest delivery rate was seen at Lycos, where 10 RoadRunner SoCal 87.01
only 47.0% of email was received, almost 28% lower AVG 83.60
than the next-worst ISP, Go.com which delivered
74.8% of all messages. 2 Top Ten US Domains
by Inbox Deliverabilty
· While marketers are struggling to improve their
Rank ISP Name Perecent
overall delivery of emails, decisions by ISPs on Inbox
placement of messages received are heavily 1 AIM.com 96.65
driven by the reputation of the sender. The highest 2 RoadRunner SoCal 87.01
percentage of inbox delivery was 96.7% for AIM. 3 Verizon 86.98
com and the top 10 ISPs continue to have inbox 4 USA 85.57
placements in the 80% range. Hotmail managed 5 Compuserve 84.06
a slight improvement but still scored fourth from 6 IWon 83.65
7 AOL 82.83
the bottom with only 59.4% of delivered messages
8 Juno 82.42
reaching the inbox.
9 Mac 82.10
10 NetZero 81.72
AVG 74.04
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3 Top Ten US Domains
by Junk/Bulk Folder Deliverability
Rank ISP Name Percent
Spam
1 XO Concentric 56.49
2 SBC Global 29.61
3 Bell South 29.52
4 Yahoo! 25.95
5 MSN Network 17.82
6 Google Mail 17.76
7 Hotmail 17.51
8 PeoplePC 13.27
9 USA 7.40
10 Earthlink 6.46
AVG 15.94
Content Filters Adjust to Changing Spam Patterns
A review of over 1,700 messages from the samples above run through EmailAdvisor's content score* feature shows
the listing of the top 10 rules most frequently triggered and associated scores. Authentication checks have greatly
increased in importance, and while the presence (or lack) of an SPF record does not affect the points awarded, having
an incorrect SPF record carries a heavy penalty of almost 2.4 points. When marketers create authentication records
with errors (such as incorrectly identifying the IP address of the sending mail server), they are actively warning
receivers that the email is fraudulent and should not be delivered.
Name Description Score
HTML_MESSAGE HTML included in message 0
HTML_FONT_BIG HTML tag for a big font size 0.26
ALL_TRUSTED Did not pass through any untrusted hosts -1
HTML_90_100 Message is 90% to 100% HTML 0.58
HTML_TAG_EXIST_TBODY HTML has "tbody" tag 0.28
BAYES_00 Bayesian spam probability is 0 to 1% 0
MIME_HTML_ONLY Message only has text/html MIME parts 0.41
HTML_IMAGE_RATIO_04 HTML has a low ratio of text to image area 1.06
HTML_60_70 Message is 60% to 70% HTML 0.29
SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record 0
* While content checkers play a very small part in determining the likelihood of an email being delivered, it is still advisable to
periodically perform checks against templates and reduce as many errors as possible.
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Europe 4 Top Ten EU Domains
by Gross Deliverability
· Average deliverability at European- Rank ISP Name Percent
based ISPs ranks almost identical to U.S. Delivered
1 NTLWorld (UK) 94.46
counterparts and well below Canadian and
2 Nildram (UK) 94.30
Australian ISPs by 6.5 and 2.7 percentage
3 Tiscali (France) 94.14
points respectively. (See Country
4 BT (UK) 94.09
Comparison Chart)
5 Yahoo! (Spain) 92.84
6 T-Online (Germany) 91.78
· All of the top 10 ISPs delivered over 90.7%
7 Tiscali (UK) 91.65
of permission based emails, with NTLWorld
8 Tiscali (Italy) 91.65
in the UK delivering more than 94.4%
9 Yahoo! (UK) 91.12
although inbox placement was only 89.4%.
10 Yahoo! (Germany) 90.71
AVG 83.38
· The ISP with the lowest delivery rates was
Alice from Italy, with only 21% of email
being delivered. 5 Top Ten EU Domains
· As European ISPs struggle to fight the
by Inbox Deliverabilty
Rank ISP Name Percent
spam epidemic, false positive filtering
Inbox
problems have dramatically increased for
1 Nildram (UK) 94.30
marketers. 2 Tiscali (France) 94.14
3 T-Online (Germany) 91.78
· European ISPs had the highest percentage
4 Tiscali (UK) 91.65
of junk/bulk folder delivery at over 20.4%,
5 Tiscali (Italy) 91.65
compared to the previous quarter at 7.6%. 6 WEB.de (Germany) 90.26
7 NTLWorld (UK) 89.42
8 Virgin.net (UK) 88.88
9 freenet.de (Germany) 85.41
10 Libero (Italy) 85.16
AVG 74.09
6 Top Ten EU Domains
by Junk/Bulk Folder Deliverability
Rank ISP Name Percent
Spam
1 Yahoo! (Italy) 28.42
2 Yahoo! (UK) 27.73
3 Yahoo! (Germany) 27.69
4 Orange (UK) 27.12
5 Yahoo! (Spain) 23.52
6 BT (UK) 21.52
7 Yahoo! (France) 21.17
8 Hotmail (UK) 17.27
9 NTLWorld (UK) 5.04
10 AOL (UK) 4.88
AVG 20.44
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About EmailAdvisor
EmailAdvisor from Lyris Technologies is a leading deliverability monitoring solution. Features include Inbox Snapshot which shows
how emails render in more than 50 email clients; Delivery Monitor which shows what percentage of emails were delivered to the
inbox or junk/bulk folder; Content Analyzer which analyzes message content against 30 different spam filters; Blacklist Monitor
checks to see if a sender's IP addresses are listed on any of 300 blacklists; and ISP Monitor provides real-time information about
email delivery delays at more than 30 ISPs. EmailAdvisor is integrated into Lyris ListHosting, EmailLabs and Sparklist or is available
as a stand-alone service. For more information visit http://www.lyris.com/products/emailadvisor/.
About Lyris
Founded in 1994, Lyris Technologies provides leading-edge email marketing software solutions to more than 5,000 customers
worldwide. Our suite of products, led by our flagship product ListManager, offers powerful tools for opt-in email marketing, list
management, database segmentation, and deliverability assurance. Lyris offers both hosted and software versions for publishing
email campaigns, newsletters, and discussion groups. Our commitment to permission-based marketing, outstanding deliverability
rates, and our extremely positive ISP relations make Lyris' solutions among the best-selling email marketing applications on the
market today. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Lyris is a subsidiary of the J.L. Halsey Corporation (OTCBB:JLHY), a leading
provider of technology solutions to marketers at mid-size businesses. J.L. Halsey's other brands include ClickTracks, EmailLabs,
Hot Banana, and Sparklist.
Methodology
From a period beginning April 1, 2007 and ending June 30, 2007, the Lyris EmailAdvisor service monitored the full delivery
trajectories of 436,558 production level, permission-based email marketing messages sent from 69 different businesses and non-
profit organizations to multiple accounts at 58 ISP domains in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
Messages were chosen to represent a cross-section of legitimate publishing activities. Examples of email publications monitored by
the study include publishing, B-to-B marketers, retail, travel, and finance, among many others. In all cases, the recipients to whom
the emails were sent had made an explicit "opt-in" request to receive the messages at the specified email addresses.
* Additionally, 1,705 unique emails from the same set above were run through a content score application using the Spam Assassin
rule set (a Bayesian filter that applies point values to multiple possible spam related signatures and sums to an aggregated point
total for decision making purposes) to determine the overall suspected content score that would determine the likelihood an email is
determined to be considered "spam".
Caveat: In addition to ISP policies regarding the processing of inbound email, deliverability rates can be affected by a sender's
content, mailing history, data collection practices, use of sender authentication protocols, and other reputation factors. Senders who
do not adhere to email marketing best practices may experience deliverability rates lower than those quoted in this report.
Lyris Technologies, Inc
5858 Horton Street, Suite 270
Emeryville, CA 94608
USA and Canada: 800-768-2929
International: +1-510-844-1600
Fax: +1-510-844-1598
5 of 6 email: sales@lyris.com
www.lyris.com