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| Lyris Study Finds False Positive Filtering Growing According to a study by Lyris Technologies, false-positive filtering (emails that are incorrectly identified as unsolicited or "spam" emails) remains high among leading email service providers (ESPs) including Hotmail and Gmail. Gmail did see a dramatic improvement in Q2 '06, with a false-positive filtering rate of only 2.97 percent compared to last quarter's 44 percent. However, Hotmail's false-positive filtering, although improving, remains high (18.2 percent this quarter compared to 23.4 percent the previous quarter). "While false positives are increasing among some ESPs, the industry as a whole is winning the fight to reduce the amount of spam", says Dave Dabbah, Director of Sales and Marketing, Lyris Technologies. "As ESPs become better and more discerning in identifying spam, the result will be a decrease in filtering of legitimate email as well. However, marketers can do their part too by becoming more aware of what is likely to get their emails incorrectly filtered". False-positive spam filtering among European ISPs remains lower, achieving an average rate of only .075 percent compared to a U.S. average of 3.29 percent. This is again due to excessive false-positive filtering at two ISPs, cs.com (Compuserve.com), and iwon.com. As well, U.S. ISPs and ESPs are more stringent in their filtering of unsolicited emails which can result in an increase in legitimate emails also being filtered. From a period beginning April 1, 2006 and ending June 30, 2006, the Lyris EmailAdvisor service monitored the full delivery trajectories of 57.836 production-level, permission-based email marketing messages (non-discussion) sent from 57 different businesses and non-profit organizations to multiple accounts at 39 ISP and ESP domains in the United States and Europe. Messages were chosen to represent a cross-section of legitimate publishing and marketing activities. Examples of email publications monitored by the study include a daily email guide for local shopping, dining, and cultural events, a weekly newsletter for wine enthusiasts, and a monthly yoga journal. Retail marketers included a national electronics retailer, an online seller of perfume and skin care products, and an online swimwear retailer, among many others. In all cases, the emails' recipients had made an explicit "opt-in" request to receive the messages at the specified email addresses. The term "gross deliverability" refers to the total number of messages delivered to the email inbox and bulk folders, combined, divided by the total number of messages sent. The term "inbox deliverability" refers to the total number of messages delivered specifically to the inbox, divided by the total number of messages sent. "False positive" refers to emails that are incorrectly identified as unsolicited or "spam" emails. In addition to ISP policies regarding the processing of inbound email, deliverability rates can be affected by a sender's content, mailing history, list hygiene and other factors. Senders who do not adhere to email marketing best practices may experience deliverability rates lower than those quoted in this report. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Computing News :: home page |