Return Path’s latest 'Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report (2H 2009)' has chastised several UK broadband ISPs, including Demon Internet , BT , AOL UK and Orange UK, because their strict anti-spam (junk email prevention) measures make them the "most difficult ISPs for email marketers to reach". Shame.

The report, which reviewed data from 131 ISPs in the USA, Canada, Europe, and the Asia Pacific territories from July through December of 2009, claims that it is referencing "legitimate, permission-based commercial [email]" and not your common garden variety of junk email marketing. Not that many people could tell the difference.


ISPs Demon and BT Internet had the highest non-delivered rates ("legitimate" marketing email that doesn't reach its target inbox) for the United Kingdom at 24.7% and 21.8% respectively. AOL UK, Yahoo!, Orange UK and Hotmail all have non-delivered rates in excess of 10%.


We suspect that the concern over this would be more palpable if the report wasn't so focused on marketing email, legitimate or not. Indeed we further suspect that many consumers may even view an ISPs non-delivery rate for "legitimate" email marketing as being something of a positive note.

However we do encourage any ISP that deploys anti-spam filtering to give its customers some degree of control over which addresses it applies to; even if that is merely in the form of a basic “on” and “off” switch. Mandatory anti-spam filtering is not always necessary and most filters will sadly catch some legitimate email, including important personal and business messages.