Transitioning Yahoo bound email from Goodmail certification

In early February Yahoo announced they were no longer offering preferred delivery to Goodmail customers. By the end of March, Yahoo will have decommissioned the Goodmail specific mail handling servers. What does this mean for Goodmail customers who have no history of mail to the normal Yahoo mail exchanges? Will they have to go through an IP warmup period?
Thankfully, no, they won’t. IP addresses that have been delivering Goodmail certified mail are being transitioned across to the Yahoo whitelisting program. Just because customers are losing Goodmail certification does not mean they will lose all their sending history at Yahoo. This is very good news, as senders don’t have to give up all their sending history due to Yahoo’s decisions.
I have heard some grumbling from some delivery experts that the ‘pre-warmup’ isn’t meaningful or useful. I strongly disagree. The reason senders have to warm up IP addresses is because spammers are very good at finding unused addresses and exploiting them to send spam. The warmup period gives the receivers a way to evaluate the mailstream from a particular IP and determine if the mail is wanted without having to subject their users to excessive amounts of spam.
In this case, Yahoo knows that good senders will be moving from one set of mail exchangers to another. They have nothing to gain by forcing those senders to go through a warmup period. They know what the mailstreams look like and can special case them. This isn’t a benefit every sender gets, in fact losing established reputation is one of the major considerations when moving IP addresses, ESPs or certification services.
While current Goodmail customers are getting this benefit now, they will be subject to the same spam filtering other senders face at Yahoo. Failure to meet Yahoo’s thresholds for good email may result in loss of whitelisting, bulk foldering of email and rate limiting.
More detailed information about delivering to Yahoo is available on the Word to the Wise Delivery Wiki.

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Interview with Matt Blumberg

Mark Brownlow posted an interview with Matt Blumberg, CEO of ReturnPath, about the merger with Habeas. It is well worth a read.
I have not yet commented on the merger and how this is going to affect the delivery industry because I am not sure how it will. Some of the effect is dependent on what ReturnPath does with the two companies and how their policies change. Here at Word to the Wise, we have known the folks at both companies for a very long time.
One thing that strikes me about this merger is that it means there are few direct competitors left in the delivery market. Everyone currently in the whitelist / delivery certification market seems to have a slightly different target audience and slightly different business model.
ReturnPath has SenderScore Certified and the Safelist. To get on these lists senders must meet criteria that, while filtered through ReturnPath, are set by the ISPs. Many senders find that they can get consistently high inbox delivery just by meeting the ISP standards, even if they are not SenderScore Certified or on the Safelist. However, certification does provide senders with an assurance that they are meeting standards.
Goodmail has their CertifiedEmail product. While certified senders must also meet criteria, they are also paying ISPs for delivery. I have always seen the Goodmail product as more focused on and more valuable for transactional senders rather than other senders. This slightly overlaps with ReturnPath’s target market, but the senders in this market do have different needs pressures.
ISIPP has their SuretyMail product. This provides a framework for senders to make statements about the email they send in a way that receivers can reliably query. This is a slightly different approach, in that ISIPP does not classify mail for their customers, but allows customers to self-classify. The benefit of ISIPP is that the ISIPP framework is trusted by their receiver-users and can push back on ISIPP if customers incorrectly self-classify.
Different markets, different business models, different approaches.

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Patent #6,182,219: Apparatus and method for authenticating the dispatch and contents of documents.

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