82% of legitimate marketers cite email filtering as problem

Stan Beer
Friday, 21 April 2006 09:04

Business IT - Security

A recent study has revealed that anti-spam filters at ISPs and corporation grateways is causing significant problems for the businesses of legitimate email marketers.

The recently study by EmailLabs revealed that deliverability is a major challenge for email marketers, while filtering by ISPs and corporations is the main culprit for not getting emails delivered to the inbox.

In the survey sent to EmailLabs' Intevation Report newsletter subscribers and ClickZ Network's "E-Mail Delivery" column readers, 82% of email marketers say getting email messages delivered is a challenge for their organizations. Nearly 50% of respondents said that filtering by ISPs and corporations is the biggest delivery-related challenge, while another 25% said they lack the expertise or resources they need to address their deliverability issues.

54% of respondents believe that controllable issues such as permission practices, email content and coding have the greatest impact on deliverability. However, EmailLabs' director of deliverability Kirill Popov says "There is a real disconnect for marketers between what they perceive is the impact on delivery and what ISPs actually do when deciding to block or not block an email," said Popov. "While aggressive content may get you filtered, a high number of complaints or bounced emails will get you blocked."

While 31% of marketers cite deliverability as a significant challenge, only 10% of respondents will make delivery their top email priority in 2006. Additionally, marketers tend to focus on deliverability actions within their control, with 50% modifying their email templates but only 17% switching to dedicated IP addresses and 6% utilizing a third-party accreditation service.

"While marketers have clearly recognized that they have delivery challenges they also are not allocating the necessary resources or taking the longer-term steps needed to minimize blocking and filtering of their emails," said Loren McDonald, vice president of marketing at EmailLabs. "The 24% of marketers who have adopted authentication technologies is encouraging, but actively managing their email reputation and using third-party-accreditation services has yet to become mainstream."