Spam Filtering Growing More Accurate, Sophisticated

Google Improves Inbox Delivery of Permission-Based Email by 34 Percent

BERKELEY, CA — July 13, 2005 — Sparklist® Technologies, subsidiary of J.L. Halsey (JLHY.ob) and leading provider of email marketing solutions, today announced improved filtering of permission-based email messages among major ISPs in the second business quarter of 2005. Sparklist publishes its findings today as part of its quarterly ISP Deliverability Report Card, documenting the delivery rates of over 72 thousand requested email messages sent to accounts at 41 major Internet Service Providers.

“ISPs appear to be getting better at distinguishing legitimate email marketing messages from spam,” said Robb Wilson, vice president of deliverability at Sparklist. “ Average rates of inaccurate filtering for Q2 hovered just over one percent this quarter, which is a marked improvement over the first part of the year.”

“This may mean ISPs are starting to use more sophisticated filtering practices,” he added.

Google’s Gmail service followed the overall trend toward improved email processing, with only four percent of permission-based messages inappropriately filtered to bulk folders—down from 16 percent in Q1. Major ISPs garnering top deliverability scores were Outblaze, Earthlink, PeoplePC, USA.net and RoadRunner—each of which delivered over 95 percent of requested email to the inbox without mislabeling or filtering it as spam. Other top performing ISPs were Compuserve, Yahoo, Lycos, Knology, and Mac.com.

The report was based over 72,406 legitimate permission-based email messages monitored by the Sparklist EmailAdvisor service over a three month period from April to June. Examples of email publications monitored by the report include a wine tasting club’s weekly bulletin, a professional sports team’s monthly newsletter, a national retailer’s monthly product bulletin, a lobbying group’s political alerts, and a non-profit’s digest of treatment advances in neurological disease. In all cases, recipient accounts made an explicit “opt-in” request to receive the email messages tracked by the study.

For a copy of the complete report, click here.