Seth Godin nails the "email stamp" issue

Seth Godin, who I first met in 94 or 95 at an AOL conference, is considered the foremost expert on permission marketing.

He *nails* the "email stamp" issue:

I say that the right metric isn't how much it costs to send a mail. It's how much sending a mail is worth! In other words, if an industry-wide .25 cent stamp eliminates spam, it's likely to double or triple the response rate to permission mail. A boon! If you send me 100 emails with stamps, and I read them all, you've spent a quarter. If you can't cost-justify that, you shouldn't be writing to me. If I were an email permission marketer, I'd love this... the same way the DMA should have embraced the do not call list.

Feb 7th 2006 2:26AM
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1. I think there are some things that need to be done. First is to clear up how confusing the MSM and everyone else portrays the thing that AOL and Yahoo will do. Most people reading it want to know how it is going to effect them. Most people aren't sending out mass emails to people, they're just contacting a few people here and there, or emailing their friends. That's the boat I'm in. I'm confused. And I'm sure that I will never pay twice for email. I'm already paying for my connection, $50 some dollars a month for access and email. Why should I have to pay to send email to friend's that use it? See this is the type of thinking everyone is using. I've heard two thing. One is that it's only going to effect commerical or big mass emailers and the little people are going to be fine. Two I've heard that the 'tax' is going to be like first class mail, delivered directly to people's inbox, while everything else either gets put directly into the SPAM folder, or that it has to get through the normal filters and such. Now, I don't know if this "paid" email is going to have to get through the SPAM filters, but I certainly hope it would. No marketer should be able to pay their way into anyone's inbox. Other clarification that needs to be made: how does the whole thing exactly work and how will it work for normal people. Also Seth Godin makes a point about how much an email is worth. An email is worth what you put into it. It shouldn't have a price attached to it. It's email. It works. It's worth $50 a month.

Posted at 2:57PM on Feb 7th 2006 by Daniel Nicolas

2. I'd like the best engineers at my ISP to put time in every week to trace all spam mailers. Then they could use all their cleverness and technology to punish spam mailers ingeniously and ruthlessly. I'd pay extra and I'll bet so would others to have a bully on our side ruining the spammer's lives. That's how companies could make some extra dough. Colluding with bulk mailers (for a fee) will disappoint me. And you know what happens when I am disappointed.

Posted at 10:29PM on Feb 7th 2006 by laurence haughton

3. as you know Jason, i think Seth is wrong and i explained why in this post http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/02/why_i_dont_agre.html You really can't put a value on an email message, certainly not a fixed price.

Posted at 12:25PM on Feb 8th 2006 by Fred

4. Jason, I agree with you that this is the right move to try to salvage email. Free email distribution leads to the unintended consequences of higher transaction costs for the consumer. A Semi-Free model transfers some of that transaction cost from the consumer to the business that sends the email.

Posted at 2:04PM on Feb 8th 2006 by Tim Stay

5. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You are making an implicit assumption that people (marketers) have the right to send me email. There are several reasons why this is a faulty assumption. 1. I pay for my email address and the bandwidth associated with it. It is not subsidized on the condition that I am willing to accept SPAM. I pay full freight, and for that price, I expect all of the bandwidth to be available and none of the nuisance factor that is implied by SPAM. My email box is private property. My postal mailbox is not, which is why the DMA can fill it with junk (even there, I have the right to demand to be removed from lists, with the force of law behind me.) 2. Getting SPAM is costly. Close to 90 of the bandwidth available on the Internet is now being consumed by junk mail. So, not only am I paying full freight for my email address, ISPs everywhere are forced to invest heavily in SPAM blocking technology, and in ever greater amounts of server storage and bandwidth that no one benefits from (except SPAMMERs) and everyone pays for in increased costs. It isn't just ISPs either. Why should all businesses have to pay a tax on Internet use just to secure their servers from unwanted junk? 3. Even if there was no cost, I have a right to privacy. I don't want the SPAM I get now, and I certainly don't want an implicit endorsement that if you pay for your email stamp, you are entitled to send me your junk. If you think you get a lot of SPAM now, just wait until so-called legitimate marketers a la DMA get implied blessing (and protection) from the government to send me whatever they want. As Seth points out, of course the DMA should want this. It is the death knell of email as we know it, and open season on my email box. While we are out violating private property rights (because that's what an email box and internet bandwidth that I pay for is - private property) why don't we also do away with laws prohibiting theft of cars? If someone needs to get to the mall, and my car is sitting unused in my driveway, shouldn't they have the right to use if for a nominal fee? $5 should just about cover it. No need to ask if it's OK, just leave the money on my windshield when you're finished. Normally, I think Seth is pretty perceptive, but he's way out in left field on this one. He's looking at it from the perspective of the sender, not the receiver. The receiver is the one who has to deal with the clutter, waste time deleting junk, risk deleting wanted mail by accident when killing the unwanted, deal with the possibility of spyware and viruses coming along for the ride, pay for SPAM blocking software and services, and pay for the bandwidth and increased costs that the network must bear. There is no mail fee you could tack on to a sent message that could compensate me for all that, especially if this crazy idea increases the amount of junk I get.

Posted at 2:11PM on Feb 9th 2006 by Paul

6. Spot on Paul. Or am I missing something? Why are normally perceptive people hot for enabling junk emailers and spammers? They know how much clutter they create and how angry it makes their customers. Why would they get in bed with any of them for any price? Do they think we are unable or unwilling to switch providers? I want a "do not email list" (like my do not call list) or some such technology from my ISP and I want them to go after serial offenders. And I am able to give my own permission for bulk emails (and I do). I don't need any help.

Posted at 2:54PM on Feb 9th 2006 by laurence haughton

7. It isn't free for companies to send me junk mail in paper form, but I can assure you that my mail box is full of it this very second. It costs money to print the mail...stuff the envelope...and pay postage...and yet we dig through it everyday when we read through our "mail". Please explain how charging a fee for individual email is any different? It will be great for anyone who wants to get into the new business of sorting out the mess created for your average Joe (big buck$ for great new services that nickel and dime us to death), but it certainly won't effect the spam on any significant level. JB

Posted at 7:51PM on Feb 10th 2006 by JB

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