According to a survey of EmailLabs' Intevation Report newsletter subscribers and ClickZ's "Email Delivery" column readers, 82 percent of email marketers said getting email messages delivered is a challenge for their organizations, and nearly 50 percent said that filtering by ISPs and corporations is the biggest delivery-related challenge; 25 percent said they lack the expertise or resources they need to address deliverability issues.

Though 31 percent of marketers cite deliverability as a significant challenge, only 10 percent said they will make delivery their top email priority in 2006. Marketers plan to focus on deliverability issues within their control: 50 percent said they would modify their email templates; only 17 percent would switching to dedicated IP addresses, and 6 percent would use a third-party accreditation service.

"While marketers have clearly recognized that they have delivery challenges they also are not allocating the necessary resources or taking the longer-term steps needed to minimize blocking and filtering of their emails," said Loren McDonald, vice-president of marketing at EmailLabs.

"The 24 percent of marketers who have adopted authentication technologies is encouraging, but actively managing their email reputation and using third-party-accreditation services has yet to become mainstream."

Key survey results

Most marketers monitor campaign-related metrics, but not those that provide more-detailed delivery reports:

87.1 percent monitor unsubscribes
85.6 percent monitor hard bounces
58.4 percent monitor spam complaints
32.2 percent monitor estimated block percentage by ISP
7.4 percent don't monitor anything.

Deliverability is a "significant" challenge for nearly one-third:

30.5 percent say it's a significant challenge.
51.8 percent say it's somewhat of a challenge.
10.3 percent say it's not a challenge at all.
7.4 percent don't know or aren't sure.

Filtering:

48.3 percent say their email is filteed by ISPs.
45.1 percent by corporations.
31.5 percent have too many hard bounces.
25.4 percent lack expertise or resources to address deliverability.
15.3 percent appear on blacklists.
11.8 percent use challenge-response requests.
11.8 percent have too many spam complaints.
9.6 percent have no deliverability issues.

Addressing deliverability problems:

50.3 percent modified their email template.
24.2 percent adopted authentication (SPF/SenderID/DomainKeys Identified Mail).
21.7 percent no longer email to non-permission lists.
20.4 percent utilized a delivery-monitoring solution.
16.9 percent switched from shared to dedicated IP address.
16.9 percent did nothing.
15.6 percent formalized a whitelisting process or established key ISP relationships.
10.5 percent switched email service providers (ESPs) or moved from in-house sending to an ESP.
9.6 percent switched to double opt-in.
5.7 percent utilized a third-party accreditation service.

Email priorities:

31.8 percent want to increase desired results.
25.5 percent want to improve open and click rates.
19.5 percent want to grow their list.
10.4 percent want to improve deliverability.
9.7 percent want to increase results from existing list.
3.1 percent responded "Other."