As noted many times before, e-mail marketing is becoming increasingly
difficult due to spam filters that usually don’t stop just at filtering out
unwanted e-mail but also e-mail we subscribe to.

The latest MarketingSherpa
article, based on a study conducted by Pivotal Veracity, paints
an incredibly worrying picture, with even 18% of all transactional e-mail
(welcome messages, confirmation e-mails etc.) being filtered out.

Here are just some of the more interesting points:

"Turns out 54 major mailers from AARP to The Wedding Channel
can’t get their permission email messages past filters at Hotmail, Yahoo, and/or
Gmail all the time either. Even AOL’s own outgoing email newsletter
department couldn’t get all of its bulk mailings past other ISPs’ filters."

"Sadly, according to this study, being an accredited Bonder Sender mailer
doesn’t help you get through to Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail either (although it
may help with other ISPs)."

"The good news is double opt-in mailers were 20 points more likely to avoid
filters than single opt-in mailers. (Double opt-ins had a 39% filter rate
and single had a 59% rate.)"

"Multiple industry studies show 20% or more of permission email doesn’t
reach recipients’ in-boxes (and worse for at-work
addresses)."

Many e-mail marketers have been counting on the Bonder Sender program to help
them get their e-mail through. But now it seems that even this solution isn’t
helping much.

As an e-mail/RSS marketer I don’t plan to stop using e-mail, but this is
just one more sign that companies need to start paying attention to RSS
now!