The Blog of Brandon Milford - Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Design

I was asked by SmartBiz to provide insight on the recent announcement that AOL and Yahoo! will be partnering with Goodmail to charge for a higher level of deliverability and its impact on the future of email marketing. I thought I’d provide my response here as well:

What Will be the Impact on Email Marketing of AOL and Yahoo!’s Use of Goodmail?

Spam is obviously a large obstacle, but is this a step in
the right direction for the future of email marketing? I don’t think so. That’s
not to say this will fail to serve as a short-term solution and we as an email
marketing provider will not look into taking advantage of this on behalf of our
clients, but I don’t see this as a long term solution for increasing
deliverability. I view this more as a band-aid cure. There’s no easy or
immediate solution for the issues with spam, so it’s a viable option for now,
but not the ultimate answer.

By charging senders for assured delivery we are not addressing the problem,
which is spam. AOL and Yahoo obviously have self-interest in this as it
increases their revenues from email, but what about email marketers? What
happens when many ISPs implement a similar strategy? Will only the email
marketers who can afford it receive the highest deliverability rates? This
doesn’t sound like the best solution.

As long as ISPs continue their whitelist programs I don’t see this greatly
impacting the future of email marketing. I believe ISPs will continue to use
whitelists, which will continue to serve as a viable alternative for email
marketers. Ultimately, the future of email marketing lies not in charging for
deliverability, but in finding a solution to further dampen the sending of
unsolicited email.

-Brandon Milford, Director of Marketing, Broadwick Corporation