A study by Return Path Research on 550 email campaigns found 77.3 percent of delivery problems occur because of a sender’s email reputation. Contrary to popular opinion, only 17% of the delivery issues were due to content concerns such as the spam trigger words “free,” images, coding, or spelling. 6 percent of the time, the inclusion of a reputation-challenged domains included in the email caused delivery issues. Complaints and spam traps are major components of reputation.

Other interesting findings:

  • 6 of the primary ISPs had higher rates of reputation filtering at 97 to 100 percent
  • 5 of the leading ISPs showed reputation to be 100 percent of the reason behind non-delivery
  • ISPs taking content as a significant filtering trigger are known to use Brightmail 89% of the time. Brightmail filters on numerous components (factors include the reputation of content based on spam traps and complaints
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