How to improve AOL delivery

DMNews interviewed Charles before he left AOL about the state of spam and the challenges for ISPs and how that affects senders. The article was published this week. In it he talks about

  • The botnet problem and what AOL is doing to combat it
  • How AOL monitors its users
  • What kinds of things AOL measures for mail, including email sources and volume
  • How AOL leaves some filtering to users through the ‘this is spam’ button
  • Authentication

All in all a good article and worth a read for someone interested in what goes on behind the scenes at AOL.

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Goodmail

Goodmail made a splash on the email marketing and ISP industries a few years ago by announcing their CertifiedEmail program. They guaranteed that using their certification would result in email going directly to the inbox, and all images in the email would be displayed by default. Senders using Goodmail would pay money, per message, and Goodmail would split that money with the receiving ISP.
This sounds very much like a situation where everyone wins. The senders get their mail to the inbox with images turned on. The receiving ISPs get a little money to deliver email and offloads some of their sender screening onto a third party. Individual recipients know that this email is certified and that it’s safe to click on links in the email.
In the time since CertifiedEmail has been announced, however, there seems to be very little adoption. Sure, receivers do seem to be signing up, a little. AOL and Yahoo have been using CertifiedEmail for a while. In summer 2007, a number of cable providers announced they would be using CertifiedEmail as well.
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