Tuesday, June 5, 2007By: J.F. Sullivan, VP Marketing
I was fortunate to participate in one of the sessions at INBOX that provided the illusion of broad show attendance. :-) In any event, our session, "Getting Email to the Inbox", chaired by James Campbell of the ESPC addressed the normal issues of address harvesting, B2B vs. B2C, etc., etc. As usual, Stefan Pollard had, arguably, the most useful information to dole out with regard to any number of subjects. Austin Bliss had some particularly useful insights into the use and abuse of list acquisition. Then, the expected question about certified email emerged.
So, as we vendors performed our normal dance about how certified email is probably not a bad thing - and it may be, in certain instances, a good thing - it suddenly occurred to me. Certified email is not reputation-based email, and that is a more important distinction than the ways we have previously thought of certified email.
My thinking went something like this: certified email is a way of paying to ensure image rendering and ostensibly, inbox delivery to AOL, Yahoo, and a growing list of other ISPs. But as recent announcements from several quarters have indicated, reputation is the determining factor in getting your email delivered. So, the usual comparison of certification services versus certified email is no longer relevant. The real landscape is that there's only one way of ensuring delivery to multiple ISPs and enterprise messaging systems around the planet - and that's by maintaining a positive reputation. If you want to leverage certified email to enable AOL to make money on the traffic - that's an ethical discussion I will steadfastly refrain from. My sole point is that certified email is an esoteric choice in the same way that certification services were a choice. Reputation maintenance is not a choice at all. Either you maintain good a reputation and send effectively or you won't be getting to the inbox - even if you do pay for certified email.
