• by Kristin Sidorak , March 8, 2006

The vast majority of commercial e-mail--60 percent--is sent to mailboxes at Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL, according to a new study by Lyris Technologies.

Twenty-six percent of commercial e-mail went to Yahoo in-boxes, while Hotmail accounted for 21 percent and AOL was responsible for 13 percent. Less than one in 10 commercial e-mails--8 percent--were delivered to users' work accounts. Lyris based its findings on a survey of 126 Web users conducted in January.

Lyris also reported that just 30 percent of U.S. Web users have only one e-mail account. Thirty-seven percent have two accounts, 19 percent use three e-mail addresses, and 13 percent use more.

The high usage of AOL, Yahoo, and MSN for commercial e-mail could bode poorly for marketers that don't wish to pay new certification fees. AOL and Yahoo both intend to implement a "certified e-mail" system that will guarantee delivery of e-mail messages with links enabled and images intact to marketers that pay a per-message fee to be certified by Goodmail.

Yahoo will limit use of its certification program to "transactional" e-mail messages, such as bank statements, but AOL plans to use the program broadly. While AOL stresses that the program is voluntary, some e-mail senders fear that AOL will mistakenly identify their messages as spam if they decline to participate.

MSN uses another program, Bonded Sender--a program of Goodmail competitor Return Path--for anti-spam authentication; Bonded Sender charges senders a flat fee, as opposed to a charge per message.