Newsletter Article

February 2006

Goodmail and AOL, email stir

Significant agitation in the email world has occurred as a result of AOL announcing that they would be phasing out their “Enhanced Whitelist” program and replacing it with a third party service called “Goodmail Certified Email”.

As my cat Sam would say, “What has this got to do with me?”  Well, not much for now.  But for some of you who may have read about this or will, I thought it best to write this blurb.

Let me explain.  This email that you are reading arrived in your inbox from Vertical Response, the email service provider that we use.  If you are an AOL email user you received this email because Vertical Response is on the AOL “Standard Whitelist”. This means that they are trusted by AOL to only send email from companies such as DGT Internet Marketing which has proven to be a legitimate volume email sender.  Incidentally, Vertical Response is not on the “Enhanced Whitelist” which is almost impossible to be on and it is not clear to most of us what the functional difference between the “Enhanced” and “Standard Whitelist” is anyway.

For those of you not using AOL email.  The use of Vertical Response, which is whitelisted by most major ISP’s as well as AOL, helps to insure that a higher rate of email reaches its target than if I did not use them.

Goodmail is a newcomer on the bulk email scene. They offer a program for mailers wishing to get higher delivery rates by charging a fee to have their email certified as spam free.  They then will provide a token attached to each email which an ISP such as AOL will recognize and send through to their users’ inboxes.  What will be the cost?  Estimates are currently around .2 to .3 cents per email.

AOL has since clarified that they will still receive email from providers on their “Standard Whitelist.”  All is well.

Confused?  We all are.  But there is a lesson.

Many of you use my email services that I provide, using Vertical Response, to send email bulletins to your customers and prospects.  The cost to you for me to manage your email program is my time to construct your email message with text and graphics plus 1.5 cent cost per email sent.  This 1.5 cents goes to Vertical Response.

Eventually the 1.5 per email charge will be increased.  Vertical Response is currently in discussion with Goodmail regarding a partnership to streamline the certification process.

The result.  Higher, more reliable delivery rates for your email campaigns at a slightly higher cost.

Graham Tweedy