AOL-Goodmail Deal Jars E-Mail Marketers
- by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, February 6, 2006
The deal, announced last week, will ensure that messages certified by Goodmail get through to AOL users' in-boxes with the links and images enabled. The program will be phased in over the next six months, and Goodmail will charge marketers a fee. Yahoo also will soon implement a similar program using Goodmail; Microsoft already uses Bonded Sender, a program of Goodmail competitor Return Path, for anti-spam authentication.
Goodmail told OnlineMediaDaily last week that it could not definitively state how much it would charge per message. This weekend, however, the New York Times estimated the price would be between 1/4 of a cent and a penny per e-mail. USA Today, which also wrote about the development, pegged the price at between .2 cents and .3 cents per e-mail.
Matthew Moog, chief executive of Q Interactive, told the Times that he would like for AOL to use more than just one certification company. Moog's company currently uses Goodmail rival Bonded Sender, run by Return Path.
David Daniels, a Jupiter Research analyst, told OnlineMediaDaily last week that he thinks certification services will benefit the industry because a per-e-mail charge will force marketers to winnow their e-mail lists. One result will be that customers would get less unwanted e-mail--which they now mistakenly report as spam. Also, when consumers are bombarded with e-mail, they end up over-compensating and deleting messages they would have otherwise read.
"This is going to force marketers to say: "Should I really be e-mailing my entire list every week?" Daniels asserted.
Last week, Return Path immediately protested AOL's intention to start using Goodmail, but the news didn't draw much media coverage outside of the trade press until Sunday, when the Times story appeared. By Sunday night, the issue had drawn widespread media attention, with stories published by USA Today, the Associated Press and other news organizations.
