Lyris report finds opt-in e-mail getting junked

Nearly one out of every five opt-in e-mails sent to US-based ISPs lands in the junk folder, with only about 76% making it to the inbox, according to a new report by e-mail marketing firm Lyris.

The report, Lyris HQ ISP Deliverability Report Card for Q4 2007, looked at deliverability rates for opt-in e-mail marketing messages from October 1 to December 31, 2007 and monitored the delivery trajectories of 436,558 e-mails sent from 69 different businesses across 59 ISP domains in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.

According to the report, AIM.com is the Internet service provider (ISP) with the highest number of delivered messages, as 93% of its delivered messages end up in the inbox. RoadRunner SoCal came in second with 92% of delivered mail landing in the inbox. Interestingly, Hotmail is second from the bottom, with only 57% of its delivered messages reaching the inbox.

The US ISPs that were more likely to junk opted-in e-mails were XO Concentric, which junked about 62% of opted-in e-mails, according to the report. MSN Network, Hotmail and Yahoo junked opted-in e-mails about 20% of the time, while AOL junked just more than 1% of opted-in e-mails.

Outside the US, European ISPs had the highest percentage of junk mail delivery at 19%, while Canada delivered 14% of junk mail and Australia 10%.