It seems that everybody in our industry has been talking about Goodmail lately, so I guess it's about time that I weigh-in on this subject.  I have seen a lot of misinformation being distributed about their service lately, and it's important for people to make informed decisions about these things.

Goodmail is not a tax, a government initiative, a plot to usurp non-profit or personal emails, or a mandatory service which will negatively impact consumers.  If you read anything that makes these types of claims (such as this petition from MoveOn.org), you are unfortunately seeing an uninformed spin on the truth.  Goodmail is simply a premium service for marketers.  Calling this service a "tax" would be like pointing fingers at Nike for "taking advantage of people whose feet hurt when they run around barefoot" or Alhambra for "charging people for quenching their thirst."  Services always have a cost associated with them, and marketers are welcome to make their own cost-benefit judgement to decide whether or not they would like to participate.  If you're not using WhatCounts to improve your deliverability, campaign management and ROI, you're missing out.  But that doesn't make our service fee a "tax"...it's simply a fee for the service that we provide.

The Goodmail program basically uses secure tokens to place two "CertifiedEmail" icons on each piece of mail that runs through their system:  one in the subject line and one at the top of the opened email.  The idea is that recipients will know that they can trust email that is Certified, so links and images will be enabled by default.  Since inbox deliverability is an ongoing concern for marketers, and open-rates and image rendering are also known hurdles, the Goodmail service helps with the circumvention of these obstacles.  In order to prove to marketers that their service has a significantly positive ROI, Goodmail is offering a three-month free trial to them.  This is more than generous.

It is (currently) impossible to try to duplicate the Goodmail icon in Yahoo/AOL/Etc.  This is a huge advantage for consumers.  If I get two messages from my bank, one with the Goodmail icon and one without it, I know which one is the phishing attack.  Right now, I have to categorically distrust anything from anybody at a "financial institution."

A friend asked me today why an email from his mom, who in his address book, may not have images enabled by default while a Certified message would.  I see this as an ISP problem, not a Goodmail problem.  Perhaps someday, AOL/Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail/Etc will place an "in your address book" icon for messages from people like your mom.  Then, when you scan your your inbox (and its many, many messages), you'll at least know which messages actually came from who they say they are from.  That doesn't mean that every Certified email is desirable.  We all subscribe to lists that we'd like to unsubscribe from.  But, I'll still be able to send a message to my mom's inbox for free, and non-profit organizations will be able to do the same thing.  AOL and Yahoo are not charging anybody for anything...Goodmail is merely offering a paid service for marketers, and consumers are benefitting for free.

I have had a chance to meet with two executives from Goodmail at a couple of different trade shows.  They have explained their technology, their business model and their pricing structure to me.  I really don't see the down-side to what they are offering.  If I'm missing something, please tell me.