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Start paying to send emails? Maybe it’s not a bad thing.
This week both AOL and Yahoo! announced that they will offer an enhanced delivery service to bulk emailers for a fee. (For more information read the ClickZ article at:
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3581301.) If senders use a certain process, and pay a fee (up to one cent per email) then the messages will be delivered with links and images intact to AOL and Yahoo! subscribers without passing through spam filters.
While some are railing against the practice, we’re not so sure it’s a bad idea (nor do we think we could change it anyway).
Not that we’re sympathetic to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like AOL and Yahoo!, but we understand a bit about their economics. Delivering all those email messages to subscribers is expensive. They save money anytime they can block one from coming in the system. And, if they can block the ones some subscribers might complain about anyway, it saves more money in the customer service and marketing budgets.
It won’t cost a lot to nonprofits. If you have 20,000 AOL or Yahoo! email addresses it will cost you $200 or less (maybe much less) each time you send an email. If it helps block spam from other senders, and increases the “open rate” of your emails, then it’s a good thing.
This is all part of a broader trend towards placing the burden of proof on the email sender. Again, it’s a good thing. At NPA, we take the same global view of the internet as the credit card companies do: the potential is virtually limitless, and yet the biggest threat to the continued growth of internet fundraising and communications is the loss of trust by the recipient.
Note: If you haven’t been to our weblog lately, visit frequently: http://npadvisors.blogspot.com. While e-fund messages like this one strive to be educational, at the blog we get a little less buttoned-up and a little more irreverent. We update it a few times a week (whenever there’s something that excites us) and invite your comments on our posts or on anything to do with nonprofits using the internet. February 2006
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