Email Deliverability tougher in US than Europe

ReturnPath recently released their 2009 Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report.

Some Key Findings Are:

• E-mail deliverability varies by international region, with European marketers enjoying the best chances of reaching consumers' inboxes.
• In the second half of 2009, only 80.1% of permission-based commercial e-mail in the US and Canada was delivered to the inbox. This represents a slight increase from the first half of the year.
• The percentage of mail delivered to the "junk" or "bulk" e-mail folders remained flat at 3% in the July-to-December time period for the United States and Canada. During the second half of 2009, 16% of e-mail messages was not delivered at all, a slight decrease from earlier in the year.
• Commercial European mailers saw a more favorable picture, with 85% of e-mail delivered to the inbox.
• In Europe, only 3.6% of permission-based e-mail was sent to "junk" or "bulk" e-mail folders, while another 11% was missing or not delivered at all.

What is the difference between North America and Europe?

According to George Bilbrey, president of Return Path, the difference between the US and Europe is due to ISPs' approach to filtering

"North American ISPs tend to use reputation more when deciding if an e-mail gets delivered, and European ISPs do much more content delivery filtering."

Asia Pacific outperformed both Europe and North America with 86.9% inbox placement, only 3% of e-mail sent to the bulk folder, and only 10.7% missing. Interestingly, in China, e-mails were more likely to get delivered if they were sent from within the country.

Have you seen your delivery rates change? Do you email more than one country? Do the rates vary based on country or region?  Share your thoughts!