Report says: 40% of valid E-mails never reach the recipient

Langa Letter: E-Mail--Hideously Unreliable
Jan. 12, 2004
A recent test by InformationWeek columnist Fred Langa shows that up to 40% of valid E-mails never reach the recipient. Here's what it all means to you.
By Fred Langa

You're losing E-mails. It's almost certain that some significant percentage of your legitimate outbound E-mails aren't getting to their destinations; or that some significant percentage of your legitimate inbound E-mails are being lost before you ever see them.
When I say "significant," I don't mean a few. I mean something like 40%, or even more in some cases. And I'm not talking about losing junk mail. I'm talking about the loss of totally valid, non-spam/non-junk E-mail.

Think about that for a minute: As many as four out of 10 of your serious E-mails--the sort you might exchange with co-workers, friends, business associates, or customers--may not be making it to their intended destinations.

This alarming statistic is derived from a large test I conducted late last year, involving more than 10,000 participants. I announced the test with a call for volunteers in an issue of my E-mail newsletter last October. It said, in part:


...I'd like to gather a group of volunteers... and send each one a simple non-spam E-mail message, in plain text and with no attachments, from a personal mail account (not a bulk mailer). I'd like to see how many of these simple messages actually make it through the gauntlet of servers, routers, and ISP-based and local mail filters.

I won't tell the volunteers in advance what address the mail will come from or what the subject line will be.... Rather, I propose to simulate a normal, unanticipated, plain text, non-spam E-mail, as if between friends or coworkers, and see what gets through....

source: INFORMATION WEEK
full article HERE!