Return Path does research on all aspects of the email universe. Below are some of the most interesting facts and figures from these studies. You can get copies of all of Return Path’s research here. For more information about our research or to interview a Return Path expert, contact the Return Path Press Office.
| On average, 20% of legitimate, permission-based email does not get delivered to the inbox of the intended recipient (Source: Internal Return Path data) | |
ISPs have a tough job: In a study of overall email traffic, we found that 46% of email came from servers which should not be sending mail at all. This includes compromised hosts, dynamic IPs and a variety of other “non-mail servers.” (Source: Return Path 2008 Email Reputation Benchmark Report | |
| Seemingly small reputation infractions can lead to big dips in deliverability. We have found that IPs categorized as legitimate servers with even one spam trap hit saw their delivered rate plunge to 38% versus 58% for mailers with no spam trap hits. IPs with an unknown user rate below 10% had 67% of their email delivered, on average, versus 44% for senders with dead email address rates greater than or equal to 10%. (Source: Return Path 2008 Email Reputation Benchmark Report | |
Marketers are missing the chance to make a great first impression. In our study of US companies, | |
Marketers either don’t care about sending email to new subscribers or the messages they send are getting blocked. In our study, 30% of US companies failed to send any message at all within 30 days. Here the UK companies did slightly worse with 39 percent not sending an email within the 35-day timeframe of the study. (Sources: Creating Great Subscriber Experiences: Are Marketers Relationship Worthy?and Creating Subscriber Experiences That Maximise Returns for UK Marketers. Contact the Return Path Press Office for a copy of the UK Study) | |
US companies are more likely than UK companies to collect personal data. We found 70 percent of the US companies in our study collected some data beyond the email address at subscribe. In the UK that figure dropped to 57 percent. Unfortunately, companies on both sides of the Atlantic completely missed the opportunity to use that data to make email messages more personal and relevant. A shocking 81% of US marketers did not use the collected data to personalize ongoing messages. In the UK, 85 percent of companies made no use of this information at all. (Sources: Creating Great Subscriber Experiences: Are Marketers Relationship Worthy? and Creating Subscriber Experiences That Maximise Returns for UK Marketers. Contact the Return Path Press Office for a copy of the UK Study) | |
Poor unsubscribe functionality leaves too many companies vulnerable to spam complaints. We found that
20% of companies sent more than one additional email message after confirming that the individual was no longer subscribed, with most of these sending four or more additional messages. (Source:Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After “Unsubscribe Me” | |
| Online retailers use relatively weak permission practices that could lead to spam complaints and deliverability failures. In our study, 31% of companies added purchasers to their email lists without requesting permission. (Source: Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers |
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