E-mail Marketing: Avoid Being Flagged as Spam; Update SPF Authentication
An increased reliance on the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authentication method to determine e-mail legitimacy was the key finding of Lyris’ E-mail Advisor ISP Deliverability Report Card for the 2007 second fiscal quarter. The study, which monitors deliverability rates for permission-based e-mail marketing messages, measured the full-delivery trajectories of more than 436,000 permission-based e-mail marketing messages using ISP domains in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia. Here are some of the report’s findings:
* Permission-based e-mails make it into U.S. ISP boxes roughly 75 percent of the time;
* AIM.com topped the list with 97 percent inbox delivery, 10 percentage points higher than second place Road Runner SoCal;
* The rest of the top 10 included (in order) Verizon, USA, CompuServe, iWon, AOL, Juno, Mac and NetZero;
* SPF authentication checks appeared in the list of the top 10 content triggers that ISPs check;
* Failing an SPF check proves costly, as it equates to 2.6 points on the current SpamAssassin test, a Bayesian scale that identifies a message as spam when it reaches 3.0 points or greater;
* Marketers sending permission-based e-mails to U.S.-based ISPs still land in the junk/bulk folder almost 16 percent of the time;
* XO Concentric easily exceeds any other ISP, sending 56 percent of invited e-mail to the junk/bulk folder; SBC Global and BellSouth are next, both junking 30 percent of permission-based e-mail; Yahoo! stands at 26 percent, followed by MSN Network, GMail and Hotmail, all at 18 percent;
* The rest of the top 10 includes People PC, USA and EarthLink;
* AOL performed the best, delivering only 1.94 percent to the junk/bulk folder; and
* Marketers sending to European ISPs had their permission-based e-mail junked more than 20 percent of the time, almost three times more than last quarter.
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