The Great Missed Email Caper

I once wrote a touching blog entry about my dear Aunt Judi, but she never indicated that she had actually read it, despite the fact that she was an email subscriber. I was hurt. Crushed. Dismayed. How could she blatantly ignore her favorite nephew? Throughout my entire childhood, she insisted that I was the center of her universe. Move forward to 2009, and we're facing The Great Missed Email Debacle of our generation. Today, it's finally clear how this travesty took place.

According to a recent report compiled by ReturnPath, more than 20% of email isn't delivered to inboxes in the United States and Canada. This is mostly the result of the type of junk mail filtering provided by the recipient's email solution of choice. With each solution maintaining its own criteria for such messages, I wanted to investigate further as to the likelihood of my aunt not receiving automated email about my special blog entry.

To say the least, the numbers were staggering. The toughest mailboxes to reach were Gmail (23%), Hotmail (20%), MSN (20%) and Yahoo! (15%). It seems that the emails most likely to not be delivered consist of email alerts, newsletters, automated system updates and generic marketing messages (not surprising). From personal experience, I can tell you that a significant portion of my requested alerts are still being sent to my junk folder. So while this isn't too surprising, the confirmation is nice.

Can you guess which one my Aunt Judi uses? Yup, that's right - Gmail! I got her to sign up for it so I'll take some of the blame. But then again, I suppose she may have simply deleted it. But that's an impossibility, right? I'm choosing to be delusional and insist that it must have been sent to her junk folder. C'est la vie.

P.S. Aunt Judi, if you're reading this, you're only getting dark meat at Thanksgiving!