Leaders Discredited from Leading? In Bill McCloskey’s Email Insider column on Mediapost today (hopefully the link will work; sometimes Mediapost isn’t open if you’re not a subscriber), he decries the lack of passion and industry evangelists in the email marketing space and compares it to the search world with at least one example involving Dave Pasternack, co-founder and president of Did-It. He then goes on to say that there are a few evangelists in the email world, but that two of us — myself and Rich Gingras, CEO of Goodmail, don’t count because we “have a vested interest in being passionate.” While I appreciate Bill’s main point and appreciate his recognizing that I do evangelize our space and am passionate…
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Goodmail
Victory for Email: AOL Enhanced Whitelist to Stay
Victory for Email: AOL Enhanced Whitelist to Stay It’s official. AOL will keep its organic Enhanced Whitelist, clarifying that is not planning on replacing it with Goodmail’s email stamp program. Goodmail will now be ONE way, not the only way, to reach AOL inboxes. Charles Stiles, the postmaster for AOL, confirmed this earlier today on the phone with me, and I announced the news on CNBC’s Power Lunch (view the clip here). This is a huge win for all companies who strive to do email the right way, earning the solid reputations that drive deliverability and response rates. Paying for inbox reach is akin to only having paid search engine marketing – it works for some business models, not others;…
Why Email Stamps Are a Bad Idea
Why Email Stamps Are a Bad Idea (also posted on the Return Path blog) Rich Gingras, CEO of Goodmail is an incredibly smart and stand-up professional. I’ve always liked him personally and had a tremendous amount of respect for him. However, the introduction of the email stamp model by Goodmail is a radical departure from the current email ecosystem, and while I’m all for change and believe the spam problem is still real, I don’t think stamps are the answer. Rich has laid out some of his arguments here in the DMNews blog, so I’ll respond to those arguments as well as add some others in this posting. I will also comment on the DMNews blog site itself, but this…
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email, Part II
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email, Part II (also posted on the Return Path blog) There’s been a lot of noise this week since the news broke about AOL and Goodmail, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to change the direction of the dialog a little bit. First, there are two main issues here, and I think it’s healthy to separate them and address them separately. One issue is the merits of an email stamp system like the one Goodmail is proposing, relative to other methods of improving and ensuring email deliverability. The second issue — and the one that got me started earlier this week – is the question of AOL making usage of Goodmail stamps…
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email (posted on the Return Path blog a couple days ago here) Remember the old email hoax about Hillary Clinton pushing for email taxation? When we first heard AOL’s plans for Goodmail today, we thought maybe the hoax had re-surfaced and a few industry reporters got hooked by it. But alas, this tax plan seems to be true. AOL has long held the leading standard in email whitelisting. Every email sender who cares about delivery has tried to keep their email reputation high so that they could earn placement on AOL’s coveted Enhanced Whitelist. Now, AOL may be saying that those standards don’t matter as much as a postage stamp when it comes…