Would you pay to send email ?

August 18th, 2009

Yesterday, I heard that Yahoo have proposed a scheme whereby individuals could choose to pay to send email. It’s known as CentMail because the idea is that each “stamp” that you buy to go on your email would cost one cent.

I should stress that the cash goes to a charity of your choice and that this is only “a research project” at this stage. They also cite the laudable intent of impacting the volume of spam, suggesting that even at 1 cent per email, that would cost spammers millions of dollars each day.

They say that the system would be entirely voluntary and “opt-in”. They go on to suggest that …

“CentMail will essentially be free for the majority of users who already give yearly charitable donations. … By making these donations through CentMail (as opposed to directly to the charity), users will spend no additional money, but will be provided with CentMail’s service.” (Source: centmail.net/faq)

I really don’t have a strong opinion on this one way or the other at the moment because I don’t know enough about all of the underlying issues. But I can foresee problems. For example, overlooking the fact that although the US is, of course, probably the largest internet user, it’s not the only one ! Besides, my favourite charities may not participate in the scheme.

There will also be those that consider that this is fundamentally against the ethos of the internet, that access to it should be largely unrestricted.

Whatever happens, the way I see it is this. If you’re using the internet to foster a relationship with your prospects and customers and it suddenly costs you money to send them email, you had better have fairly deep pockets or some alternative way of keeping that relationship alive. Social media may be one way, but the best alternative may be your blog.

What do you think ?