It appears the pay-for-delivery email model could be gaining traction with announcements by Yahoo and AOL that they plan to start levying fees of $2.50 to $10 per thousand for guaranteed delivery. According to emarketing guru Anne Holland, who believes that these fees are inevitable, the cost to send email will roughly double for most large mailers.

Her advice:

• Make sure email addresses are accurate
• Prune inactive addresses from your list
• Segment your list into finer increments
• Look into RSS feeds for some of your messaging

We'd add:

• If you allow users to designate more than one email address, consider a nominal annual fee for the extra messages
• Along the same lines, you may want to reconsider the policy of unlimited free email alerts; changing it to a two-tiered approach with a couple free each month or unlimited for $3-$5/month

More information:

• Postage is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail, by Saul Hansell, New York Times, Feb. 5, 2006
• Report on Alerts and Emessaging (Online Banking Report #93/94)
• Report on Pricing (Online Banking Report #109)

--JB