Press release: Lyris Technologies today announced that although the combined average rate of gross and inbox email deliverability of permission-based email marketing messages for U.S. and European ISPs and ESPs stayed constant from Q4 2005 to Q1 2006 (achieving a rate of 89 percent and 86 percent respectively), gross (i.e. overall) deliverability rates for European providers outstripped their U.S. counterparts. European ISPs achieved an impressive 94 percent, while U.S. ISPs' average gross deliverability went down 6 percent from the previous quarter, to 86 percent deliverability.

U.S. ISPs and ESPs fared even worse in terms of inbox delivery -- their rate went down to 82 percent compared to European inbox delivery rates of 94 percent. The incidence of false-positive spam filtering is also higher in the U.S., with 7.7 percent of valid messages getting blocked, compared to 3.5 percent in Europe.

"Although deliverability rates can be affected by a sender's content, mailing history, list hygiene, and other factors, our customers' compliance with ISP policies and the maintenance of positive ISP relations helps to ensure maximum email delivery," states Dave Dabbah, Director of Sales & Marketing at Lyris. "No matter how professional your email marketing efforts are, some things just aren't under your control. Email deliverability at Internet Service Providers is at the top of that list."

Lyris also found the following:

• Users with addresses with one of the top ten U.S. providers were 38 percent more likely to receive their opt-in email in their inbox than those who used one of the bottom ten providers (97.4 versus 59.4 percent).


• Two newcomers to the list of top ten U.S. domains in Q4 (Knology.net and Mac.com) were outpaced in Q1 '06, which saw three new additions to the list: AOL, CNC, and Netscape, with AOL coming in at fourth. CNC improved their deliverability by 2 percent to reach seventh place on the list, while Netscape joined the list by improving their deliverability by 5 percent.


• False-positive filtering remains high among Gmail, Hotmail, and CNC. Gmail had reduced their false-positive filtering over the course of 2005, but saw a dramatic increase in Q1 '06, filtering 44 percent of emails. Hotmail's false positive filtering also continues to increase, from 15.7 in Q4 to 23.4 in Q1 '06. CNC's rate actually decreased by 6 percent compared to Q4.


• At 97.1 percent, inbox deliverability for the top ten European providers was comparable to that of U.S. providers.

For more informaiton, download the Lyris Q1 2006 ISP Deliverability Report Card [pdf].