• by Masha Geller , January 21, 2003

This morning, 19 leading email service providers announced the formation of a coalition to fight spam. According to the announcement, the group, which will be formally known as the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) Email Service Provider Coalition, will work to “find solutions to the spam problem and protect the appropriate use of permission-based email as a marketing and business communication tool.”

Collectively, the member companies deliver email on behalf of approximately 250,000 customers and claim that legitimate email marketing has become an “unintended victim in the war against spam,” and legitimate email senders need a stronger voice representing their interests.

According to Anna Zornosa, CEO and President of Topica (an email services provider and coalition member), 2003 will be the year that state legislatures will consider laws that will impact email, Congress will design and consider bills, and ISPs will implement new policies and filter technologies to limit spam. “Email service providers need to be part of these considerations, to make sure that the desires of their customers and their customers' subscribers are represented,” she says. “Until the formation of the NAI Email Service Provider Coalition, there was no organization able to give voice to this unique viewpoint.”

Current membership in the ESP Coalition includes all of the major companies in the email service provider industry: Digital Impact, DoubleClick, Experian, iMakeNews, Aptimus, Avenue A, BlueHornet Networks, Britemoon, Cheetahmail, Clickaction, eDialog, Eversave, ExactTarget, GotMarketing, MindShare Design, Roving Software, Topica, Virtumundo, and Yesmail. An advisory group of companies that actively use email as a communication tool has also been created. Trevor Hughes, Executive Director of the NAI, will serve as Executive Director of the coalition.

Call me a defeatist, but I’m not holding my breath. This is the latest initiative in the war on Spam (the IAB released Email Ethics guidelines just last month on the wings of several research reports about the damaging effects of spam and several years of talking about the ‘spam crisis’), and I don’t have to tell you how little has been accomplished to date to fix the problem. Judging by my own inbox, it’s getting worse every day and I see no improvement in sight.

Nevertheless, here’s to good intentions.