Sparklist Publishes ISP Deliverability "Report Card"

BERKELEY, CA - April 5, 2005 - A report published today by Sparklist Technologies gives CompuServe and SpamCop top marks on the delivery of opt-in email marketing messages. Email delivery rates for CompuServe and SpamCop reached the 97 percent mark, while delivery rates for RoadRunner and Juno rates hit just one point below at 96 percent.

"We're looking at email delivery from a business perspective," says Sparklist General Manager Luis Rivera. "There's a growing need on the part of legitimate organizations to know which ISPs are blocking and filtering their messages, and at what rate."

The report analyzed a total of 21, 684 opt-in emails sent by 49 established business and non-profit organizations to 41 different ISPs and ESPs over a three month period.

Other large ISPs earning top marks for inbox deliverability are PeoplePC, Mac.com, Earthlink, and Adelphia.net, each of which delivered 95 percent or more of messages to the recipient's inbox. Some domains such as Yahoo and SBC Global scored high in overall deliverability, but automatically filtered a significant percentage of messages to bulk folders. Google's Gmail delivered only 79 percent of the messages sent over the three month period, and 16 percent of those received were automatically filtered to a bulk folder.

"From a business perspective-if an email gets filtered, it may as well have never arrived," says Rivera. He points out that it's possible to do a good job at delivering legitimate mail while still blocking junk messages.

"One really interesting thing we found is that SpamCop has the highest inbox deliverability scores of any Email Service Provider at 97 percent" he says. "Now there's an organization that's obviously deeply committed to fighting spam, but one that also knows how to distinguish between legitimate emails from the unwanted ones," he says.

Email messages were chosen to represent a cross-section of legitimate publishing activities. Examples of publications monitored by the study include a metropolitan wine tasting bulletin, the monthly newsletter of a professional sports team, and a non-profit organization's alerts on new therapies for neurological disease. Retail publishers included an online perfume shop, a swimwear manufacturer, and an online book seller, among many others.

"When a customer asks to get email from a nationally-known book seller about new title releases or free shipping periods, an ISP should recognize that those emails are worlds apart from those that he never asked for, from people he's never heard of, who use disreputable tactics to sell fake brand-names or dubious medications," explains Rivera.

"Some ISPs are just able to make the distinction better than others," he adds.

European ISPs scoring top marks for email deliverability included WEB.DE, Tiscali, and Freenet.

Sparklist' report is based on one quarter's worth of opt-in business mailings from more than 40 companies representing a wide range of industries and non-profit arenas. Over 150 commercial mailings were sent to multiple accounts at 41 ISPs and ESPs over the first business quarter of 2005 for a total of 21,684 email messages analyzed by the study.

A copy of the report (PDF) can be found here.