AOL will be implementing the Goodmail certified emailer system at the end of the month. This will create a new email tier guaranteeing that customers of Goodmail get their email delivered into the top of the inbox.

AOL touts this new partnership as helping their members stamp out spam. Of course this is a complete and utter falsehood. The Goodmail system actually will ensure that sponsor emails hit the top of the inbox. It doesn’t mean these advertisers are spamming but who else is going to pay but advertisers and corporations. Sure, the AOL member probably opted in at some point … but now at AOL the advertiser message is going to take priority.

The Goodmail system relies on a significant payment by emailers. No one but advertisers and large corporations will pay …. period! AOL has called statements such as this extreme and fanatical. But really, who is AOL helping here with this new for-pay priority email system? Let’s follow the money… An advertiser or corporation pays Goodmail. Goodmail does nothing but tell AOL that they are not spammers. AOL then takes 50% of the Goodmail cash every time this company sends an email to an AOL address. What does the subscriber get ? Nothing!

So in summary, Goodmail and AOL get lots of money and AOL’s subscribers get advertisements at the top of their inbox. Obviously, AOL is doing this deal for money… no other reason. Unfortunately, it may be penny smart and pound foolish because AOL subscribers have many other email options. And the first option that comes to mind … Gmail … sounds kind of like Goodmail … but is completely different … it’s free!

The recent announcement by AOL and Yahoo that they are going to use a pay to play email system called Goodmail raises an interesting question.

Should any ISP have the right to alter content in an email if they have no evidence of spam or fraud? With the Goodmail announcement AOL stated that opt-in publisher who don’t pay risk having their links and images disabled. Many ISP’s make loading images a choice of the user but I know of none that disable links.

It could be argued that altering content of an opt-in email newsletter libels the sender. If a publishers links don’t work the reader is likely to blame the sender not their ISP. This damages the reputation of email publishers. Similarly, if an ISP puts an email publication in the spam folder when it has no evidence of actual spam isn’t this itself making a potentially false statment to the recipient.

Obviously, none of this has been argued in a court of law but as the publisher of the iEntry Network I’m predicting it will be. If ISP’s adopt the Goodmail system and require publishers to pay or risk an ISP moving your opt-in content to the spam folder and then possibly disabling links and images many publisher will begrudgingly pay.

I believe this may be the tipping point where publishers may force a test of whether ISP’s can legally alter email content and even lable content as spam when they themselves cannot produce evidence that justifies these actions. An ISP’s need for money cannot justify this in my opinion.

Goodmail Systems announced that AOL and Yahoo are going to implement their pay-to-play email authentication system. With the Goodmail service AOL, Yahoo and eventually numerous ISP’s would charge permission based newsletter publishers a fraction of a cent per email in excange for guaranteed delivery into a subscribers in-box. AOL has stated that this will ensure that a mailers images and links are not disabled. The sales pitch is that this is a better way to minimize spam and dangerous phishing emails.

And what exactly would publishers be paying for? Simply the right not to have their email publications distorted and made useless to subscribers by removing images and links. Paying a third party in order not to have my products messed with seem a little bit too much like a Sopranos episode to me.

As publishers we need to ask ourselves, does AOL have the right to distort our publications and damage our brands unless we pay? AOL Postmaster Charles Stiles told DM News, “You know how important [links and images] are for people for their branding, so it is easy for recipients to recognize brands and remember that they have signed up for the newsletter…”. In essence, AOL knows they are harming legitimate publishers brands … but they now have a solution, pay us and we won’t damage you.

Our newsletter subscribers asked to receive our emails. If an ISP takes on the service of offering email accounts, there is an expectation by the consumer that the ISP will not alter their email. An altered email deligitimizes a publishers brand and can cause the consumer to falsely report it as spam. AOL’s Stiles told ClickZ, “If they get a message from a sender that has images and links enabled one day, and another one the next day where they’re not, they tend not to trust that so much, or think there was an error. It sends an unclear message to the consumer,”.

Exactly … but is it fair to require legitimate publishers to pay every ISP in the world to make sure their brands aren’t F’d with?

So what is the plan here? Is it for all the major ISP’s to sign up for a single companies authentication service? Are publishers going to have to kick back to Goodmail for every email they send? And I forgot to mention the real motivation of ISP’s to use Goodmail … they get a cut of the fee. Anti-spam is the selling point but new money is what is truely driving AOL and Yahoo.

What AOL doesn’t seem to realize is that their paying subscribers will simply leave if they can’t get the email that they want. In the end only a fraction of publishers will pay … thus only a fraction of free newsletters will be delivered without alteration to AOL email accounts.

As an AOL customer, don’t I have the right to get newsletters unaltered that I subscribed to?

Goodmail has an admirable plan and if most ISP’s adapt this it could mean an end to spam and phishing … but at what cost? Possibly the end of free email newsletters, free customer updates and worst of all … the elimination of a consumers right to receive email that they chose to receive.

Maybe it’s time for a few million more AOL and Yahoo email users to switch to GMail! That’s the ticket.

At the Syndication Conference in San Francisco there are a lot of believers in RSS as a replacement for email marketing. I can’t disagree more and finally … I found two speakers yesterday who still believe in email. Now, I have a vested interest here … my company iEntry Inc. which publishes WebProNews derives about 70% of our revenue via email ads in our newsletters. We have RSS feeds too!

Speaking on a panel were Jim Brady, Vice President & Executive Editor, Washingtonpost.Com and Andrew Eisner, President, Bayview Consulting. Andrew previously worked for PC World. I also spoke to both of them later at a reception held by Yahoo.

Jim stated that RSS is only responsible for a small percentage of Washingtonpost.com traffic and even a smaller percentage of ad revenue. Washingtonpost.com started accepting ads in RSS feeds earlier this summer. Jim noted that “there just isn’t that much demand from advertisers yet”. He also made it clear that the site is integrating RSS just about everywhere and believes that over time RSS will be a significant factor in pageviews and revenue … but just not now.

And that is precisely the point of this post. RSS has the potential to be a marketing force … but it is only potential. That means folks… it is not guaranteed to happen. It’s just a prediction.

Andrew later told me that he still reads news via email newsletters …. sorting them very effectively in Gmail. He also thinks that RSS has great potential but it is not more powerful than email at this point.

In my opinion RSS is a great concept in that it enables easy syndication of content …. all types of content, not just text and links. But the promise of RSS as a marketing tool that is better than email is only a theory … not a reality. I think it is more likely that RSS and email will ultimately co-exist as powerful marketing vehicles.

The fact is they serve different purposes for marketers. Email is a broadcast medium that can deliver content and marketing messages quickly to large … but targeted … permission based audiences. And because email is used by EVERYONE on the internet on a daily basis it is a powerful way to communicate with people. RSS is a news distribution medium with many users who don’t want to see advertising. Of course, as syndication matures beyond the early adopters RSS could become a prominent advertising medium.

So, when you hear the hype about RSS … don’t believe that email is dead. It is actually on the rebound with less spam, higher open rates and increased subscriptions to newsletters.

Email doesn’t have to die just because RSS has come along… and in my humble opinion it won’t.

I think people forget that email marketing is still more powerful than search marketing. Adwords is great for marketing targeted niche items which need a trickle of leads a day. It works especially well for consumer products. Email marketing is still better for instant response in large numbers … especially for B2B.

In all of my tests with Google Adwords I can’t find key words that deliver any significant numbers of targeted promotions for our niche B2B email newsletters. Mind you, I did this only as a test of search marketing … there are many other ways to get subscribers to niche email newsletters. My tests indicate that very few search impressions are available related to “Supply Chain Management”. (SCMNews is one of the iEntry Network’s more niche email newsletters.) So few that we were lucky to get more than 20 clicks a day to our Adword.

Email newsletters and email lists can deliver much more. For instance, if someone were trying to target potential SCM software users — advertising on SCMNews would put their product in front of several thousand interested prospects within a very short time frame. You can’t do this with search advertising.

With all the attention search marketing is getting I just thought I would mention that email marketing is still a very powerful way to get lots of targeted leads fast!

An article in the Wednesday edition of the Wall Street Journal caught my attention. It illustrates with examples how email is still a strong marketing platform. If you’re not a subscriber we covered it in WebProNews.

I’m interested in your experiences with search advertising, especially targeted B2B products or services…

I’m new to blogging personally but I’m not new to opt-in email. Believe it or not email is still used by millions of people as a way to read content (email newsletters). We at iEntry have over 4 million subscribers to our HTML newsletters even though many of them have RSS feeds as well. So why not combine the concept?

For every blog there should be a well produced HTML email newsletter available. WebProBlog already has one! Simply subscribe to the right. I’m not talking about a boring text newsletter of blog links but a more advanced HTML newsletter that takes the best posts and reader comments and is distributed in order to spark more discussion and reach larger audiences. At iEntry, we already do this with our forum WebProWorld, why not for a blog.

We are also evaluating the concept of initiating an email newsletter creation and distribution service which would automate the making and sending of your most popular and commented-on blog posts. Would this be of interest with the popular bloggers? To be determined….

We can all be gung ho about the great blog and syndication revolution … but connecting with people can happen via email too!