MT. VIEW, Calif., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Goodmail Systems, Inc. today announced that it has completed reseller agreements for its CertifiedEmail service with 15 leading Email Service Providers (ESPs), including nine of the 13 leading full- and collaborative-service ESPs according to JupiterResearch's 2005 E-Mail Service Provider Market Guide.
CertifiedEmail is Goodmail's solution for creating a class of trusted email, offered only to accredited senders having the best email practices, who, working with these Goodmail business partners, will have their messages delivered with a unique trust icon indicating the authenticity of each individual message. CertifiedEmail provides a level of security against phishing and email-based fraud, while also providing corporate senders a means of protecting the integrity of their brands. Consumers receiving CertifiedEmail can feel safer in acting on these received messages, while senders can achieve higher delivery and open rates.
The ESPs that have signed up to offer CertifiedEmail to their corporate customers include BlueStreak, Acxiom Digital, e-Dialog, Epsilon Interactive, ExactTarget, Exmplar, Harte-Hanks Postfuture, Premiere Global Services, Responsys, Silverpop, SmartDM, TailoredMail, Yesmail, Whatcounts, and Zustek.
"We are honored to partner with so many leading ESPs and look forward to working with them to deliver the benefits of CertifiedEmail to their corporate clients and to consumers," said John Ouren, senior vice president of sales and business development for Goodmail Systems. "Because these ESP partners have the necessary sending infrastructure, they are able to deliver the per-message authentication capabilities that CertifiedEmail offers, providing corporate volume senders the means to eliminate the risk of fraud while improving deliverability, message integrity, and the overall effectiveness of email communications."
In addition to overt fraud and attempts to phish legitimate corporate brands, one of the challenges volume senders have faced is the inevitable degradation of email communications. Since images and links in messages can often hide malevolent exploits to steal consumers' identities, many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other email box providers have implemented automatic disabling of those links and images. With CertifiedEmail, however, since the senders are accredited and individual messages are authenticated, participating ISPs automatically enable links and images in volume email.
ESPs are companies that provide email delivery services for corporations seeking to provide optimal delivery service to its customers, and provide a channel for delivering e-mail based newsletters, transaction messages, and other forms of volume email.
While the market for CertifiedEmail could include all volume senders of promotional messages, newsletters, and transactional messages who seek improved deliverability, message integrity, and trustworthiness, certain types of early adopters seem to be gravitating toward the Goodmail service from the financial, retail, media, and nonprofit sectors.
The CertifiedEmail system consists of two components. First, an accreditation and reputation monitoring service validates that senders are legitimate corporations managing the best opt-in e-mail practices with the lowest consumer complaint rates. This ensures that only trustworthy corporations with reputable brands can use CertifiedEmail. Second, approved senders have their messages individually stamped with a unique cryptographically secure token that ensures consumers these messages are indeed from the represented sender.
"The Global 2000 companies we work with rely on email to present their brands to their customers," said Kevin H. Johnson, president of Acxiom Digital. "The CertifiedEmail service protects brand integrity both by presenting messages as designed and by providing a level of trust in message authenticity. At Acxiom Digital, we are committed to providing our clients industry-leading email delivery and are happy to add CertifiedEmail to our suite of deliverability solutions."
"Creating a trusted class of email is clearly in the industry's best interest, and the Goodmail solution certainly presents a testable proposition," said John Rizzi, president and CEO of e-Dialog. "We are pleased to present CertifiedEmail as a deliverability option to our clients, and the economics appear sound for companies that send high value e-mail or absolutely require delivery to the inbox. Careful testing and analysis will quickly tell us if the added benefits outweigh the added cost and deliver higher ROI for our clients."
"Goodmail offers a unique solution to the market," said Chip House, vice president of privacy and deliverability for ExactTarget. "Through its accreditation and reputation monitoring, CertifiedEmail ensures sender accountability, creating more differentiation for legitimate emailers. Success in email can be achieved only be respecting your subscribers' wishes and sending relevant, engaging content. CertifiedEmail is a new class of email that helps email recipients receive and locate the messages they really want."
"Reputation is the next wave in e-mail marketing," said Richard Merrick, managing director, Harte-Hanks Postfuture. "As marketing has become customer-centric, it also has become more of a dialogue. Customer engagement is based on trust. Being able to offer Goodmail's CertifiedEmail to our clients provides one method for helping consumers recognize authenticated, trusted email messages."
"With phishing and pharming attacks eroding online consumer confidence, certification is one of the steps that legitimate marketers can take to build trust and reach their intended audience," said Tricia Robinson, vice president, marketing and strategy, Premiere Global Services, Marketing Automation. "Premiere Marketing Automation's Deliverability Services currently combine delivery best practices and e-marketing solutions, incorporating Goodmail's CertifiedEmail solution to our suite of services adds to the overall value our clients have come to expect."
"We have a number of large financial and retail customers who are committed to testing the CertifiedEmail service and several other clients looking at the program now," said Heather Palmer Goff, director of ISP relations and deliverability for Responsys. "The Goodmail program appeals to our customers because of the unique trust icon that differentiates CertifiedEmail from regular email messages. In addition, our clients like the concept of a 'delivery confirmation' from the ISP that the message was delivered at the server level."
"CertifiedEmail technology provides an entirely new approach to the growing problem of phishing and deliverability in email," said Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop. "We are very happy to be able to offer our clients this additional method to certify trusted email communications."
"GoodMail's CertifiedEmail simply makes good business sense for our clients, who are already adamant about sending highly targeted, relevant and 'wanted' email - yet can't afford to have email go undelivered," said Matt Highsmith, CEO of TailoredMail. "The ROI for guaranteed delivery and a differentiating presence in the inbox via CertifiedEmail is substantial. Our clients use TailoredMail to deliver paid subscription content, highly targeted notifications and alerts, and dripped sequential content that 'tells a story.' Any interruption in delivery for these programs reduces their effectiveness, subscriber satisfaction, and ultimately brand loyalty. We have several clients anxious to use the service."
"Goodmail is the next generation in email deliverability and we're looking forward to testing the model with key customers. The CertifiedEmail service will ensure that consumers receive timely and authentic communications that are intended expressly for them. That kind of certainty is important to not only our partners, but everyone," said David Geller, president and CEO of WhatCounts.
"We are happy to support this legitimate industry solution for trusted email deliverability," said David Fowler, senior director of deliverability and privacy services for Yesmail. "The Global 2000 brands we work with require a trusted channel of communications with their customers."
"Protecting the legitimacy of email communications from fraud is one of the most serious challenges facing volume emails today," said Ajay Shah, president of Zustek Corporation. "Services like Goodmail's can help restore a level of trust to consumers who want to be able to use the email channel to its fullest potential."
About Goodmail Systems
Goodmail created the CertifiedEmail service, the highest standard in email certification, to provide a safe and reliable class of email for the benefit of consumers, legitimate senders and mailbox providers. The Goodmail CertifiedEmail service offers a new class of email that will help shield consumers from fraud and phishing. Goodmail's executives are respected and trusted by key thought leaders in the industry and have become a major voice in the dialog on solving the vexing problems that affect the email ecosystem.
Goodmail Systems, Inc.
CONTACT: Karen Hopp, +1-212-798-1443, khopp@connors.com, for Goodmail Systems
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