My take on email stamps.

I have always had a problem with the misuse of email. With email we have the greatest database marketing tool in the history of mankind and yet many marketers choose to abuse it as simply "cheap paper". In old fashioned marketing you focused on Reach & Frequency for success. We all know this doesn't work any more and as we all know the marketers who are not being successful are using email as a cheap way to shout louder and shout more frequently. The industry is in an uproar over the concept of having to pay for premium (guaranteed) delivery. Why? Probably because most have no way to determine the value of their email .or their ROI thresholds are so low that they can't make any money on their Campaigns (you know I hate that word and the concept behind it) Remember that Jerry Maguire memo .fewer clients? More personal relationships? It got him fired, but he was right. The same is true for email the success of our industry depends on less email and more investment in the relationship. I'm not endorsing anything specific here with Goodmail or the AOL program. I can't say if this will drive more success for our mailers that choose to participate and experiment with it. But I'm not going to dismiss it out of had like so many have. The great thing about internet marketing is that it's all transparent it's all measurable. The goal of our clients is higher lifetime value better relationships. I'm willing to support experiments to see if having an email stamp helps this cause.