• by Shankar Gupta , February 22, 2006

Fifty-eight percent of consumers feel that the e-mail marketing they receive is usually targeted to their needs and interests--up from 53 percent in 2005, according to a study released Tuesday by e-mail services firm Epsilon Interactive.

The study, based on a January survey of 1005 respondents, also found that spam appears to be waning. Fifty-six percent of consumers reported receiving less spam now than last year.

"Increasingly, email that is irrelevant to consumers is being tagged as spam and legitimate marketers must continue to improve and fine-tune their e-mail communications efforts around individual consumer needs," the report stated. Epsilon Interactive found that 56 percent of consumers reported receiving less spam, and 75 percent of e-mail marketers reported using an anti-spam filter program to ensure their e-mails' successful delivery--up from 65 percent in 2005.

Although spam is on the decline, the survey states, false positives on ISPs' spam filters remain relatively steady. Thirty-one percent of consumers report that e-mail they have opted-in to receive has ended up in their junk mail folder--down from 32 percent last year--and 55 percent of users regularly check their junk mail folders for legitimate marketing messages, up from 52 percent last year.

The study also noted that Yahoo Mail this year has overtaken AOL as the most widely used e-mail service among those surveyed, with Yahoo claiming 23 percent of respondents, compared to AOL's 15 percent. Last year, 19 percent of respondents used Yahoo, while 20 percent used AOL. Microsoft's Hotmail remains in third place, with a 12 percent share--unchanged from a year ago--while Gmail went from 1 percent in 2005 to 5 percent in 2006.