Sender Score Benchmark Report

The 2012 Return Path

Sender Score Benchmark Report
The Powe

o Be ea d

The Return Path Sender Score measures a business ability to communicate

with its customers. very ISP uses different criteria to determine whether
email should be delivered to the inbox, filtered to a spam folder, or blocked
altogether. owever, The Return Path Sender Score is a universal metric
that predicts deliverability across ISPs with a high degree of accuracy. More
importantly, by transparently laying out the key factors impacting email
deliverability and explaining how they can be optimized, we help businesses
increase the chances that their emails will land in customer inboxes. Simply
put, the Return Path Sender Score helps businesses and ISPs communicate
more effectively.
The 2012 Return Path Sender Score Benchmark Report additionally addresses:

The global email deliverability context.

The components of the Return Path Sender Score.
Global trends in key areas including email volume, complaints,
unknown users and spam traps.
Sector and region-specific deliverability trends.

Finally, well review ways that businesses can improve their Sender Scores.
s an index of an email senders reputation, the Sender Score is a crucial tool
that ISPs can use to make deliverability decisions, and that businesses can use
to improve their chances of reaching customer inboxes. hen emails fail to
reach inboxes, businesses fail to communicatewith a direct impact on the
bottom line.

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Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

xecu ve Su

a y

after reviewing 130 million IP addresses sending nearly 20 trillion emails, we found that over 85% of these
messages received by ISPs are classified as spam.

Spam levels decreased by 40% from January through pril, in part due to the takedown of the Rustock botnet.
Spam levels increased 45% from June through ecember.
The average IP address had a Sender Score of 25.96, compared to 90.46 for Return Path clients.

Sender reputations across the globe and industry sectors were affected primarily by the following factors:

unknown user rates or those email addresses no longer in active use

complaint rates when email recipients mark a message as spam
Spam traps, an email address set by ISPs to deliberately catch spammers

orldwide, North merican senders had the best reputations with an average Sender Score of 67. The M ( urope,
Middle ast and frica), P ( sia-Pacific) and L ( entral and Latin merica) regions all fared much worse with
average Sender Scores of 22, 20 and 18 respectively. No country in these regions had acceptable reputation rates
indicating a need to understand and follow best practices.
Social Networking sites are in need of the most improvement with an average of 20 spam traps per IP address and
unknown user rates above 5%. Retailers and banking industries struggle with complaint rates of 2.96% and 3.16%.
aving a good sending reputation is possible. For senders achieving a Sender Score of 90 or greater, they can achieve
an average delivered rate of 95%. For the major webmail providers, a Sender Score above 90 means an 81% inbox
placement rate at Gmail, almost 80% at otmail and 90% at ahoo!.

The ha e

e o ISP

Most Email Is Spam

There are trillions of emails sent every year, and the vast majority of them are spam.
Global Sender Score Distribu on
70 %
90-100: Great

60 %

60.00%
80-89: Good

50 %

70-79: Fair

40 %

60-69: Bad

30 %

50-59: Very Bad

01-49: Blacklist

20 %

16.40%

2.99%

2.73%

3.14%

2.62%

2.56%

1.96%

2.15%

5.45%

[30,40]

[40,50]

[50,60]

[60,70]

[70,80]

[80,90]

[90,100]

[10,20]

[0,10]

0%

[20,30]

10 %

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study
fter a significant drop in the beginning of 2011, spam volume steadily increased after July, as did the total number
of messages blocked. mails that were delivered (including emails filtered into spam folders) steadily increased
throughout 2011.

Email Volume
40M

Global Average of Total

DELIVERED

35M

Global Average of Total

ATTEMPTED

30M

Global Average of Total

BLOCKED

25M
20M
15M
10M

20111227

20111207

20111117

20111028

20111008

20110918

20110829

20110809

20110720

20110630

20110610

20110521

20110501

20110411

20110322

20110302

20110210

20110121

20110101

5M

Its important to clarify what we mean by spam. e dont mean emails offering you subscriptions to magazines you
already receive, or credit cards you dont need, or social networks youre already a part of. Those emails arent filtered
with quite as much care as they could be, but by and large the offers theyre making are legitimate.
hen we talk about spam, were talking to emails you almost never see: the messages that get routed to your
spam filter, or blocked before they ever reach your account. These are emails sent from illegitimate and unknown
accounts as well as millions of computers infested with Trojans and running as zombies. These emails should never
have been sent; no ISP should accept them, and this spam accounts for over 85% of all emails.
Protecting email recipients from this huge volume of spam is not quite as difficult a challenge for ISPs as it might sound.
Three-quarters of illegitimate emails come from IP addresses that are completely egregious: they do not have reverse
NS; they didnt send a single email in years and then 100,000 in a day; and so on. Their Sender Scores range from
0 to 50; handling them is easy. The challenge comes in deciding what to do with border cases: IPs that score in the
50 to 70 range. good percentage of these are spammers, but others are legitimate senders who fail to implement
deliverability best practices. Inevitably, IPs will mistakenly identify some of the latter as spammers.

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

The ha e

e o Bu

e e

Not Becoming Collateral Damage in the War Against Spammers

ery few legitimate businesses will find their IPs scored between 0 and 40 for a prolonged period of time. xcepting
those who have had their IPs hacked by spammers, this range consists almost entirely of senders engaging in practices
that are more accurately described as criminal than sloppy. owever, a significant percentage of businesses might
find themselves with scores between 60 and 80, with the result that many of their emails will be blocked or filtered as
spam. The opportunity costs are significant: without inbox placement, click-through and conversion rates fall to nearly
zerotaking revenue and R I down with them. In fact, businesses with Sender Scores ranging from Bad to ery
Bad fail to place nearly 80 percent of their emails in recipient inboxes.

Sender Score Bands and Average Delivered

Sender Score

Average Delivered

0 - 60

21%

61 - 70

67%

71 - 80

68%

81 - 90

92%

91 - 100

95%

Inbox Percent
Sender Score

Gmail

Hotmail

Yahoo

0 to 50

26.35%

34.51%

46.61%

51 to 60

29.53%

29.77%

51.99%

61 to 70

32.09%

36.31%

55.85%

71 to 80

38.61%

41.20%

62.46%

81 to 90

62.31%

61.39%

79.71%

91 to 100

81.09%

79.71%

89.89%

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study
ISPs are understandably eager to protect their users. But, in doing so, they may be blocking or filtering emails from
legitimate senders. hile ISPs continually work to improve their filtering algorithms, the onus is on businesses to
improve their deliverability best practices.
In this Return Path report, well review the factors that impact inbox deliverability in detail, as well as global patterns
we discovered in 2011. Finally, well review deliverability best practices and how they can improve your Sender Score.

Return Path's Impact on Sender Scores

90.46
25.96
Return Path Client Average

The o

o e

o The Re u

Global Average

Pa h Se de Sco e

The Return Path Sender Score is calculated on the basis of various sending behaviors. In our review of global
deliverability trends in 2011, well review three of these components in detail.
Complaints: The volume and percentage of emails from an IP address that recipients mark Spam.
Unknown Users: The percentage of emails sent from an IP address to non-existent addresses.
Spam Traps: The number of emails sent from an IP address to decoy accounts ISPs use to catch spammers.

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

G o a T e d
Complaints
omplaints are registered when email recipients mark a message spam. ISP algorithms are crucial, but no metric is
more important than user-reported complaints. s a result, this is the single most important indicator affecting email
deliverability. Specifically, our data show that email senders need to keep their complaint rates at one-tenth of one
percent or below in order to avoid negatively impacting inbox placement.

Average WorldWide Complaint Rates

Total

5.0%
4.0%
3.0%
2.0%
1.0%
20111227

20111215

20111203

20111121

20111109

20111028

20111016

20111004

20110922

20110910

20110829

20110817

20110805

20110724

20110712

20110630

20110618

20110606

20110525

20110513

20110501

20110419

20110407

20110326

20110314

20110218

20110206

20110125

20110113

20110101

Total complaint volume spiked at two points in 2011. The first was in late-February and early-March. The second, more
predictably, was in mid-November, as businesses ramped up email volume for the holiday season.
omplaint rates rose along with complaint volume early in the year. owever, while complaint volume spiked during
the holiday season, complaint rates were comparable to the highs in late-February and early-March. This is consistent
with patterns in previous years. Total email volume rises to such an extent during the holiday season that recipients
cant keep up. Rather than marking this huge volume of holiday messages spam, many recipients simply deleted
messages, causing a drop in overall complaint volume. Furthermore, users have no incentive to complain about
multiple messages from the same sender. single IP might send three messages a day during the holiday season, but
many recipients will only mark one of them spam, driving overall complaint rates further down.
Unknown Users
nknown sers are email addresses no longer in active use. These include email addresses that have never existed,
as well as abandoned email addresses.
Businesses are unlikely to send emails to addresses that have never existed, unless they are automatically generating
addresses or engaging in other black hat practices. Businesses are more likely to send emails to addresses that
are no longer in use. Most often, this is because they have kept addresses on their lists despite a long-term lack of
engagement. owever, the highest volume of nknown sers emails are the result of businesses collecting their users
address books and sending messages to the entire list. (This accounts for the high percentage of nknown ser among
social networking sites, described in the Sector nalysis below.)
It is inevitable that businesses will have nknown ser addresses in their lists. Therefore, ISPs only block senders if
their unknown user rate is as high as 5 to 10 percent. owever, businesses should still aim to keep their nknown ser
rate as low as 2 percent.

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study
Spam Traps
hile nknown sers are email accounts that happen to be out of use, ISPs set up spam traps for the express purpose of
catching spammers. n nknown ser rate of up to 5 percent is acceptable, but sending messages to even a single spam trap
can kill a senders reputation. In fact, many Blacklist operators use Spam Traps to determine which addresses to block.
There are two kinds of spam traps:
1. Email accounts that have never been in use. These account for the majority of spam traps.
2. Recycled email accounts. More rarely, ISPs use abandoned accounts as spam traps. (To exclude legitimate senders,
they first send codes to previous recipients indicating that the account no longer exists.)
s with nknown sers, social networking sites send the highest number of messages to spam traps, for reasons
explained in the Sector nalysis below.

Key Re o a T e d
North merican Sender Scores are significantly higher than scores in other regions. Many regions (including hina,
Brazil, Spain, Italy, and even France) deliver spam almost exclusively.
In all regions, Return Path client averages far outperform regional trends.

Key Regional Trends by Region

Region

Average Sender Score

North America (NOAM)

Return Path Client Average

67

90

United States

66.93

90

Canada

70.22

85

22

85

United Kingdom

50.75

91.5

Spain

26.84

82.4

Italy

22.42

91.1

Germany

33.24

84.6

France

47.43

84.2

Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA)

Asia-Pacific (APAC)

20

72

China

35.56

75.9

Australia

55.79

94.0

Central and Lan America (CALA)

Brazil

18

82

15.88

83.7

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

North America
Average
Sender Score

Average
Complaint Rate

Average Unknown
User Rate

Average
Spam Traps

Canada

70

1%

6%

4.90

United States

67

5%

4%

2.29

espite having the highest sending reputations globally, the .S. and anada have issues with complaints, unknown
users and spam traps. The .S. also has very few restrictions around non-permission acquisition of email addresses,
which puts marketers at risk for acquiring spam traps and receiving high subscriber complaints.

EMEA
Average
Sender Score

Average
Complaint Rate

Average Unknown
User Rate

Average
Spam Traps

France

47

3%

10%

11.48

Germany

33

6%

7%

3.52

Italy

22

3%

5%

6.58

Spain

27

2%

6%

6.77

United Kingdom

51

1%

6%

6.35

The most surprising thing about reputation metrics in urope is that they are so low when they have some of the strictest
laws around acquiring email address. For example, in Germany where double opt-in has been seen as the law, their Sender
Score was 33 and they had above average complaint rates, unknown users and spam traps. France, having a Sender Score
of 47, had one of the highest Sender Scores in urope, but had the biggest problem with unknown users and spam traps,
indicating that marketers have issues with list hygiene and keeping their lists up-to-date. Italy and Spain also had slightly
above average complaints, unknown users and spam traps with their Sender Scores coming in very low at 22 and 27
respectively. The K had the highest Sender Score of 51, but is struggling with high unknown user rates of 6% and high
average spam trap rates of an average of six per IP address. This indicates that uropean marketers are at high risk for
blocking and filtering.

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

APAC
Average
Sender Score

Average
Complaint Rate

Average Unknown
User Rate

Average
Spam Traps

Australia

56

2%

9%

5.71

China

36

1%

7%

1.72

Its not surprising that china has a low Sender Score of 36. Its an emerging market and the email senders may have
a harder time understanding reputation factors and what it takes to get delivered to inboxes outside of china. while
their reputation metrics appear to be low, its because a majority of their email is blocked and never delivered. Return
Paths last deliverability Benchmark Report showed that 80% of their mail was blocked. Therefore, if you cant get your
mail delivered, you cant send to a spam trap, much less have a subscriber mark your email as spam.
ustralia has typically high deliverability rates, which is somewhat reflected in their Sender Score. owever, with
unknown user rates at 9% and and having nearly six spam traps per IP address, they need to focus on how they acquire
and handle new and and old addresses.

CALA

Brazil

Average
Sender Score

Average
Complaint Rate

Average Unknown
User Rate

Average
Spam Traps

16

3%

7%

4.87

historically, Brazil has struggled with deliverability and their reputation. Its an emerging market
and email m arketing is relatively new. additionally, Brazil sends out a lot of email which would be
considered spam which is causing an issue with their extremely low Sender Score of 16. with a
complaint rate of 3%, unknown user rate of 7% and average spam traps at nearly five, most
marketers have a long road ahead in resolving their deliverability and reputation issues.

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

Key Sec o T e d
Most industry sectors performed at or near global averages. But there were significant outliers in a number of categories:
1. High frequency of spam traps among social networking senders. ne of the most important tools social networks use
to grow their subscriber base is the address books of their current users. owever, this presents a risk: most email
recipients do not actively manage their address books, resulting in numerous unused or abandoned emails being present.
s a result, social networking sites were hitting an average of 20 spam traps.
2. Social networking and gaming had the highest degree of unknown users. For reasons outlined above, social
networking and gaming sites also have unusually high unknown user rates.
3. The highest complaint rates occurred in social networking, banking, retail, and corporate services. ther industries had complaint rates above two percent, but social networking, banking, retail, and corporate services were
the only sectors to approach or breach a three percent average.
Note: ll sector data refers to Return Path customers. ( hile we can categorize IP addresses by region, we cannot use
IPs alone to determine industry sector.)

Complaint Rates by Sector

4%

3.5%

3.5%

3.2%

3%

3.0%

3.0%

2.5%

2.0%

2%
1.5%

1.0%

1.0%

1%
.5%

0%

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Total Spam Traps by Sector

25

20.8

20
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For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

10

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

Average Unknown User Rates by Sector

6%

5%

5%

5%

4%

4%

3%

3%

3%
2%

2%

1%

1%
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o c u o
Improving Your Return Path Sender Score
healthy Return Path Sender Score is no more optional for businesses than a healthy credit score. Neglect your email
deliverability reputation and youll fail to reach thousands of your customers. nd even if your emails are delivered,
a poor Sender Score could mean that they arent reaching recipient inboxes. Given how infrequently email recipients
elevate messages from the spam folder, thats as good as being blocked.
The first step toward improving your Sender Score is finding out what it is. e offer free access to our Sender
Score to any sender, receiver or consumer of email at our reputation portal: http://www.senderscore.org. Senders
and receivers can register with senderscore.org for free to gain access to detailed reports on the metrics that
drive their sending reputation.
The next step is to reduce your complaint rate:

Sign up for feedback loops with your ISP(s). This service, provided by nearly every ISP, lets you know every time a
recipient marks one of your messages spam.
Periodically analyze your complaints to locate patterns of subscriber discontent. If particular offers or subject
lines perform poorly, quickly fix them.

Finally, practice the basics of list hygiene:

ollect good, clean data about your email subscriber base.

Track bounces and remove unknown users.
Implement a win-back and resting strategy to deal with inactive subscribers.

nd if you need additional support, Return Path is here to help.

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

2012 Return Path, Inc. www.returnpath.net | v010512

11

Sender
Score Benchmark Report
Case Study

Me hodo o y
Return Path conducted this study by monitoring data from its Reputation Network from January to december
2011. This study tracked the reputation rates for more than 130 million IP addresses sending nearly 20 trillion
emails to ISPs in Return Paths Reputation Network. For each IP address, Return Path recorded total messages
sent, delivered and blocked. we also reviewed unknown user, complaint, and spam trap rates for each IP
address. we assign each IP address its own score, called a Sender Score, based on these data points.

ou Re u

Pa h

Return Path makes email work better by scoring and certifying email senders from around the world. e help
marketers, publishers and other large-volume email senders increase their response rates by providing the worlds
leading inbox deliverability solution. e help mailbox providers and email administrators at ISPs and enterprises block
unwelcome and malicious email by providing near real-time IP reputation scores and other data-driven tools. Taken as
a whole, these tools and services improve the consumer experience of email by protecting them from spam, phishing
and other abuse. Return Path offers free access to Sender Score, the email reputation measure compiled through our
cooperative data network of ISPs and other email receivers, at our reputation portal: http://www.senderscore.org.
Information about Return Path can be found at http://www.returnpath.net.

Contact Us
North America
New York
304 Park venue South, 7th floor
New ork, N 10010, S
Phone : +1 212-905-5500
California
100 Mathilda Place, Suite 100
Sunnyvale,
94086, S
Phone : +1 408-328-5000
Colorado
8001 rista Place, Suite 300
Broomfield,
80021, S
Phone : +1 303-999-3100

Australia
Australia
Level 20, 201 Sussex Street
Sydney NSw 2000, australia
Phone : +61 2 9006 1591

South America
Brazil
Av. Brig. Faria Lima, n.
1690 Cj. 142
So Paulo SP CEP
01451-001
Phone: +55 11 3740 8300

Europe
United Kingdom
12 Melcombe Place
London, Nw1 6JJ, uK
Phone : +44 (0) 845 002 0006
France
171 avenue charles de Gaulle
92200 Neuilly sur Seine, France
Phone : +33 (0)1 82 88 59 75
Germany
Neuer all 80
20354 amburg, Germany
Phone : +49 (0)40 822 138-438

For more information please email rpinfo@returnpath.net.

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12

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