New York—Marketing email accounts for the preponderance of spam reports, according to a study by email deliverability company Return Path. Perhaps as result, inbox delivery rates continue to fall, the company said.
Return Path's “Email Intelligence Report” found legitimate email sent by marketers accounted for 70% of “this is spam” complaints as well as 60% of all hits on spam traps, email addresses used to catch and flag spam. These spam-report results, higher than those for any email source, may be one cause of declining email deliverability rates, according to the report.
Return Path's study was based on an analysis of inbox, blocking and filtering rates for more than 315,000 campaigns performed from July through September, as well as subscriber panel data from more than 2 million email users across different email providers.
Because users tend to hit their spam buttons rather than formally unsubscribing from email they no longer are interested in, Return Path recommended that marketers “consider changing their email marketing strategy to keep recipient enthusiasm high.”