Deliverability to the Inbox not the Junk Box

Just like 2004 was the year of CAN-SP@M, 2005 is going to be the year of deliverability. We are going to see some dramatic gestures and relationships forged over the next year to increase deliverability through some of the larger ISPs. We will see some sort of postage mechanism in place whether it is in the form of a stamp on each e-mail or block payments to ISP's to insure e-mail gets delivered to the in-boxes and does not get blocked. Email marketers are willing to pay, and it could be a great source of income to the larger ISPs.

To support such a service, there will be an equivalent of an independent Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for email marketers that will open up the in-box gates and let messages be delivered, and it will include things like insuring that the messages are truly CAN-SPAM compliant, rather than just appearing to be so and will require true double opt-in verification.

In fact, we will soon see an eBay-like rating system attached to each email message. Customers rate each marketer like they do on eBay and only marketers that have reached a certain level of customer satisfaction can get offers through. We are already seeing community-based spam elimination systems such as Cloudmark.

Why not build a customer satisfaction index in as well? In fact, the entire email industry should take a chapter from eBay's playbook. If ISPs started basing their deliverability options around their user's positive feedback with the advertiser rather than negative spam complaints, they might find they are not only servicing their customers better by providing community rated offers to those who want to receive them, but open themselves up to a nice revenue stream as well.

Don't expect this January 1st, but do look for it to become something that will better delivery this year for your opt-in campaigns.