AOL To Phase Out Enhanced Whitelist?

[THIS STORY UPDATED FRIDAY FEB 3rd, 2006 18:00 PST] New information has been brought to light over this very controversial issue. read this entry first.

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AOL is phasing out their enhanced whitelist service over the next 5 months and replacing it with a certified sender model (via Goodmail Systems) that will cost YOU a fraction of a cent per email delivered to their subscribers if you want your images or links to be active for AOL members to view.

Delivering to AOL could drastically raise email delivery costs…for many, the cost will exceed a multiple of what it already costs to deliver the entire mailing. Will AOL’s subscribers stand for it? Will you end up paying for it?

Charles Stiles, AOL’s Postmaster released this (in part) on January 30th, 2006:

“On April 3, 2006, AOL will change the qualification criteria for the Enhanced Whitelist by lowering the complaint threshold to an extent that will significantly reduce the number of IP addresses included in the program.

On June 30, 2006, AOL will terminate Enhanced Whitelist privileges. This change will disable links and images by default from all non-certified bulk email viewed from AOL 9.0, AOL webmail and all subsequent client releases. As always, links and images can be enabled by the end user on a message-by-message basis.” -Source

Many email service providers have commented on the issue… the majority of comments, uhm, well, not in support of the new program.

Matt Blumberg, CEO & Chairman of Return Path commented:

“With senders having to pay a fraction of a cent for each email sent, the fees for companies (and profits for AOL and Goodmail) will mount and good mailers will not always be able to participate — even if they have a pristine email reputation and customer relationship. This is in effect taxation of the good guys with cash – and it does nothing to help the good guys who can’t afford the cost or to deter the bad guys who just plan to spam anyway.” … “AOL stands to make a lot of money at the risk of setting back email as best practices-based marketing. This is bad for senders who care about setting high email standards, bad for consumers’ inboxes and simply, bad policy.”

To read what Jason Calacanis, Brad Feld, Bill Nussey, Eric Thomas, Rob Wilson, David Daniels, Richard Gingras and Chris Knight think of the new AOL/Goodmail Systems announcement, [Read the rest]

[tags]enhanced whitelist,charles stiles,certified mail,matt blumberg,richard gingras,goodmail systems[/tags]