Probably one the oldest Internet-related urban legends is the old "the U.S. Postal Service is going to start charging postage on e-mail …" which for a variety of reasons couldn’t happen, but now … As reported earlier this week on ClickZ and today in the NYT, Yahoo and AOL have plans in the works to charge from 1/4 -1 cent per address for "premium access" to their members. The plan is essentially that in exchange for this fee AOL and Yahoo will direct the e-mail straight to inboxes without having to pass through spam and phishing filters (with proper proof I gather that the recipient actually requested the contact). Don’t worry, if you don’t pay the e-mail still will get through, maybe, it will have to pass through the spam and phishing filters which means that it could be lost in the process.
This is where blogging and RSS syndication technologies come in. As so aptly put by Steve Rubel
That’s all folks. The door has officially closed on email marketing. Maybe this will drive more companies to start up opt-in RSS feeds and blogs that facilitate dialogue.
Once the easy way to transmit information, e-mail is becoming less and less efficient. Blogs and RSS by nature get around these problems because they are opt-in by nature. As the Yahoo and AOL plans move forward, and expect other companies to follow suit, and more "premium" RSS feeds appearing to replace the traditional e-mail newsletter. RSS newsletters (and blogs) that will also be able to offer targeted advertising as well.
Tags: email tariff, Yahoo, AOL, RSS, blogs
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