Postage stamps on email?
This is an interesting concept:
Yahoo is now going to give preferential treatment to email from companies that pay a quarter a cent per email. The senders must send email only to those who have given them explicit permission for email, or risk being banned.
What are you thinking? Is this a violation of the basic principle of email? I do not think so.
Spam, as we know it today, is almost dead. All spam mail goes into the junk mail folder, thus negating the entire effect of email as a marketing device. However, if spam is made paid for, then it would create differential spam, by putting the paid email one step above the free spam that are sent.
In the current context, spam does not serve any purpose at all. If it is made paid, it will work as a self checking mechanism from both directions. First of all, companies would respect spam more, and choose wisely whom to send it to. They would stop sending millions of mails to all and sundry expecting them to look at it. Obviously, since they are paying. It would pass through the spam filters, and therefore get banished to the junk mail folder.
From the other direction, the customers would have more respect for email coming in from paid providers, because they now know they would not be sent irrelevant email. Only mail that satisfies some kind of value proposition relevant to them would be sent. So they would open it too.
This is the first attempt at making a "first class" for email. A class where email will not go through spam filters, and make it directly into the inbox.
Of course, this has come under fierce criticism from different quarters, because most people believe that paid email is a violation of one of the basic advantages of email. Others also argue that this will greatly reduce the number of email sent from different companies. A third objection is that paid email going to the inbox directly would increase the spam that the customer is going to view, and hence it is an intrusion into his inbox. A mail that would now be in his spam folder, is going to come into the inbox.
I believe both these fears are unfounded. For one, email is no longer a tool for advertising, because people don't even read advertising email anymore. In fact, it hardly reaches them anymore because it goes directly into the spam folder. Therefore, although technically the number of spam mail that is sent by companies is reduced, it will increase in efficiency greatly, because it now has a greater chance of being viewed by the customer, and as a consequence, there is a greater chance that it will convert into sales. Secondly, it will obviously reduce the amount of spam being sent on the internet and hence everyone benefits, including the email service provider. Thirdly, paid email would now ensure that companies send email only to prospective customers, not all and sundry. Obviously, because the company is paying for it. This would mean that some kind of market research would enter the business. This would make email even more effective as an advertising instrument. Finally, paid emails would be sent only to customers who explicitly agree to be sent this mail. They should sign up for it, or else the sender would be banned. This would ensure that the customer is not unnecessarily spammed. He should have signed up for it before hand.
Paid email has a good chance of materialising, but if it does, it will be the great revival of email as an instrument of internet advertising.
Categories: Internet-Marketing
Yahoo is now going to give preferential treatment to email from companies that pay a quarter a cent per email. The senders must send email only to those who have given them explicit permission for email, or risk being banned.
What are you thinking? Is this a violation of the basic principle of email? I do not think so.
Spam, as we know it today, is almost dead. All spam mail goes into the junk mail folder, thus negating the entire effect of email as a marketing device. However, if spam is made paid for, then it would create differential spam, by putting the paid email one step above the free spam that are sent.
In the current context, spam does not serve any purpose at all. If it is made paid, it will work as a self checking mechanism from both directions. First of all, companies would respect spam more, and choose wisely whom to send it to. They would stop sending millions of mails to all and sundry expecting them to look at it. Obviously, since they are paying. It would pass through the spam filters, and therefore get banished to the junk mail folder.
From the other direction, the customers would have more respect for email coming in from paid providers, because they now know they would not be sent irrelevant email. Only mail that satisfies some kind of value proposition relevant to them would be sent. So they would open it too.
This is the first attempt at making a "first class" for email. A class where email will not go through spam filters, and make it directly into the inbox.
Of course, this has come under fierce criticism from different quarters, because most people believe that paid email is a violation of one of the basic advantages of email. Others also argue that this will greatly reduce the number of email sent from different companies. A third objection is that paid email going to the inbox directly would increase the spam that the customer is going to view, and hence it is an intrusion into his inbox. A mail that would now be in his spam folder, is going to come into the inbox.
I believe both these fears are unfounded. For one, email is no longer a tool for advertising, because people don't even read advertising email anymore. In fact, it hardly reaches them anymore because it goes directly into the spam folder. Therefore, although technically the number of spam mail that is sent by companies is reduced, it will increase in efficiency greatly, because it now has a greater chance of being viewed by the customer, and as a consequence, there is a greater chance that it will convert into sales. Secondly, it will obviously reduce the amount of spam being sent on the internet and hence everyone benefits, including the email service provider. Thirdly, paid email would now ensure that companies send email only to prospective customers, not all and sundry. Obviously, because the company is paying for it. This would mean that some kind of market research would enter the business. This would make email even more effective as an advertising instrument. Finally, paid emails would be sent only to customers who explicitly agree to be sent this mail. They should sign up for it, or else the sender would be banned. This would ensure that the customer is not unnecessarily spammed. He should have signed up for it before hand.
Paid email has a good chance of materialising, but if it does, it will be the great revival of email as an instrument of internet advertising.
Categories: Internet-Marketing
posted by shravan at
Friday, February 10, 2006
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