AOL Retains Whitelist, but Goodmail Deal May Be Good for Industry, Analysts Say

The deal announced last week between AOL and Goodmail, which will ensure that messages certified by Goodmail get through to the inboxes of AOL users with links and images enabled, may benefit the industry, writes Mediapost.

While Return Path last week protested the move, Jupiter Research analyst David Daniels told Mediapost that the certification services - which will cost anywhere from .2 cents to 1 cent per email, according to the New York Times - may be good for email marketers because it will force them to ask if they really need to be sending every message to everyone on the email list.

Eventually, that will mean customers will get less unwanted email which they now mistakenly report as spam, and with less unwanted mail cluttering their inboxes, open rates may rise again.

AOL, in the meantime, has reversed tactics and is now claiming that it will retain its whitelist, DM News reports (via MarketingVox). Without the whitelist, which allows marketers’ email to get through spam filters, email marketers would have been hard pressed not to pay to use the AOL-Goodmail certification. Now, an AOL spokesman is saying, “We hope that people will slowly come off the Enhanced Whitelist and sign up with Goodmail.”