Marketing Studies

As already noted many times everywhere around the internet, getting e-mail content delivered is a difficult task in-deed. Facing spam filters and other e-mail filtering tools and methods, it's a wonder any of our e-mail gets through at all.

To help us "get around the problem" at least somewhat, here is Robin Good with a great list of "content triggers" (keywords) that Microsoft Outlook uses to mark our e-mail as possible spam.

Since Outlook is one of the most popular e-mail clients, it certainly pays well to take these in to account. I know I certainly will, starting with the next e-mailing I send out to my lists.

But, in this day and age, one wonders whether keyword filters really are a valid choice?

With so many technology advancements, aren't there better ways of stopping unwanted e-mail? Does e-mail really have to be blocked based on many words end-users could easily use in everyday conversations?

The one thing that e-mail spam filter producers should understand is that while spam is hurting internet use, not getting personal messages delivered is even worse and fundamentally disturbs the users' trust in to the internet as a communicational channel.

Certain solutions that might "cure" the spam problem are already in development, among those the Sender ID (intended to verify an e-mail sender's identity), being developed by Microsoft, but these are still quite far from being applied to everyday e-mail use.

In addition, it seems that e-mail postage via the Bonded Sender Program is also under strong consideration, which means more bad news for e-mail publishers.

Yes, the Bonded Sender Program requires e-mail senders to pay a certain fee for getting their e-mail messages delivered, just like traditional mail postage. A day might soon come when legitimate mass e-mailers are going to have to pay this e-mail postage to ensure their e-mail messages are delivered.

If this happens, what will the various small businesses and internet entrepreneurs do? Especially considering their midget budgets ?

The future of e-mail does not look rosy.