Goodmail. Do we do it?
The bods at Goodmail must have a big marketing drive at the moment. I’ve been questioned about their product, CertifiedEmail, a number of times recently.
The answer, “yes, we can send CertifiedEmail,” is kind of by-the-by. I’m more interested in its relevance in the UK market and the potential negative aspects.
CertifiedEmail, in a nutshell, is paid-for authentication of emails. An email sender can enter into a relationship with a number of CertifiedEmail-compatible ESPs whereby it will pay a fixed charge for each email it sends. In return, the ESP will place the email directly in the recipient’s inbox, bypassing spam filters.
Email authentication’s nothing new. Buzz phrases such as ’sender policy framework’,’sender-ID’ and ‘domain key registration’ have been batted around for years. CertifiedEmail is perhaps unique in that it’s paid-for.
The pros? Goodmail argue that it’ll restore trust between commercial and non profit senders and individual email recipients. They assure us that it’s only available to kosher establishments - those who sweat day and night to ensure they’re sticking to email best practises.
The cons? Some groups are taking a different view to Goodmail. There has been uproar claiming that CertifiedEmail serves to legitimise spam. After all, it seems that anyone with enough cash in their back pocket can hand over the readies to guarantee that the email recipient, willing or not, is going to see their message. And what about those who don’t cough up? Aren’t genuine family and friends getting a raw deal as their entirely innocuous dispatch has to run the gauntlet?
But pros and cons mean little if the product isn’t actually relevant. Currently CertifiedEmail boasts affiliation with AOL, Yahoo and a smattering of lesser providers. While the first two may carry some weight over the pond, in a Hotmail-dominated UK market I just can’t see companies trampling over each other to invest in this product.
Of course if the Goodmail marketing gurus are worth their salt, we could see a wave of interest in CertifiedEmail in the future. For now, one to watch.
Tags: certified mail, email marketing, Goodmail
One Response to “Goodmail. Do we do it?”
Mark Brownlow Says:
The relevancy is a good point that often gets overlooked in the debate.
Just to clarify. Authentication is a means of discovering whether the sender really is who they say they are. But that doesn’t tell you if the sender is a good emailer or a bad one.
Goodmail is about email certification. Which is a stamp of approval for the sender. You can’t get certified without meeting pretty stringent criteria. Spammers could not get certified. (If they somehow did, Goodmail would go out of business in a flash. So it’s not going to happen.)
There are other email certification alternatives too, using different models, such as the ones offered by Return Path’s Sender Score Certified and Habeas’s Safelist.
February 8th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
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