Reversal of Fortune – Long Live The Enhanced White List

David Daniels | February 07, 2006, 03:55 PM

In a swirl of controversory related to phasing out their enhanced white list, AOL reversed their position from a week ago, stating that the phase out “was never carved in stone.”

The confidential document embargoed until January 30th that I wrote about, titled “Taking New Steps to Make Commercial Email Safe for AOL Members” certainly appeared to be final document complete with a timetable. While AOL will move forward with its commitment to certified email they will also continue offering the enhanced white list. In an exchange that I had with AOL postmaster Charles Stiles today, he confirmed that the enhanced white list would continue as long as it was operationally appropriate and in the best interest of their members.

So given this turn of events, is the Goodmail announcement is still important news? Yes, particularly so for marketers that view their email efforts as mission critical, this certified mail program deserves some scrutiny. Those marketers whose brands are under attack by spammers and phishers can certainly benefit from such an accreditation program. This program provides immense benefit to transactional e-mail, which is where I believe we’ll see programs such as Goodmail be successful first. In fact, when Yahoo! begins testing this program it will be with transactional messages.

While I recognize that some are incensed at the cost of such a program, we must consider the cost of continuing under the status quo. According to some of our research, 4% of online consumers have been victims of phishing attacks, 47% fear that e-mails apparently from their bank are not legitimate and our recent email marketing forecast finds that $107 million dollars of email marketing spending will be wasted in 2006 because of erroneously blocked email. These are just some of the reasons why I stand behind my earlier position that this is a positive move for our industry. Knowing that this will not be a requirement from the ISPs but rather an additional measure of security for them and their members should be a comfort to everyone who recognizes the value of the channel.