Good and Bad News about E-Mail

09/13/2004

The number of inappropriate and potentially sensitive images sent as e-mail attachments has declined over the past six months, but...

According to research conducted by MessageLabs, during the six-month period from March to August 2004, the ratio of e-mail attachments containing non-work related material that can waste valuable bandwidth and possibly offend employees — such as pornography, cartoons, jokes and greetings cards — was 1 in 4,756 (0.02%), down considerably from the same period a year ago when the ratio was 1 in 1,357 (0.07%).

"While we cannot say for certain what has caused this drop,' says Mark Sunner, CTO at MessageLabs, "one possible explanation is growing enforcement of corporate governance requirements. For companies that use e-mail to conduct critical business transactions and communications, corporate governance can be a great concern. We are now seeing a number of organizations using e-mail management solutions to help ensure compliance and reduce risk."

E-Mail scanned by MessageLabs also revealed a drop in spam and viruses in circulation in August 2004. Of the e-mail the company reviewed 84.2% was categorized as spam, compared to 94.5% of the e-mail scanned during July 2004. In addition, 6.9% of the e-mail scanned by MessageLabs was identified as virus-infected during August, a decrease from the 7.3% intercepted during July.

He also noted that the drop in spam could partly be due to Operation Web Snare, when US authorities arrested more than 150 people for a variety of online criminal activities, including spamming. The operation may have worried spammers enough to suspend operations, "for now," says Mr. Sunner.

A related report from JupiterResearch, the annual "E-Mail Marketing Buyers Guide," ranked E-Mail Service Providers (ESPs).

"While e-mail service providers' application features have not changed significantly over the last year, larger differences can be found among the providers' usability, breadth of services and metric clarity," says David Daniels, JupiterResearch's Research Director.

Jupiter named the following seven vendors as market leaders, in alphabetical order:

Bigfoot Interactive
Digital Impact
DoubleClick
E-Dialog
Exact Target
Silverpop
Yesmail
In its own note of cautionary advice, however, Jupiter stated that 61% of the ESPs they evaluated remove hard bounces from their delivery rate calculation, which inflates delivery rates.

"Such a widespread practice makes it impossible to accurately compare ESPs on important metrics such as deliverability," says Mr. Daniels. Jupiter advises marketers and ESPs to include delivery failures in their calculations, because understanding the impact of hard bounces has implications on list hygiene, churn and ultimately the sender's reputation with ISPs.

Most worrisome, though, the research firm found that 25% of the vendors evaluated were not properly focused on federal compliance features. In fact, only one-half of the ESPs had the functionality necessary to comply with the CAN-SPAM regulations

Source of Article: eMarketer

Date of Article: September 13, 2004