Exciting times to be an email professional

For the last couple of years, my colleagues at Goodmail and I have been on a mission - determined to advance email into the 21st century. Our catchy motto was that at the same time the web moved from "Web 1.0" to "Web 2.0," email moved a couple of steps backwards.

In "Email 0.7," as we dubbed it, delivery is spotty, images are blocked, trust is nonexistent. Our CertifiedEmail product addresses these issues: by guaranteeing delivery of valuable email messages, displaying images and enabling links by default, and by placing a trust mark next to trustworthy messages, we began to restore trust in email.

But we didn't stop there.

Remember your excitement the first time you used Google Maps and you could actually pan and scroll the map using your mouse? If applications can live in web pages, why couldn’t they live inside email messages? The answer is security. The very same technologies that enable cool functionalities can also be used by malicious senders to harm users. To protect their customers, ISPs routinely block each and any active component embedded in incoming email messages. As a result, email remained moored in the 1990s.

But what if ISPs could enhance the user experience and enable advanced functionalities with full confidence that their users won't be exposed to security risks?

Goodmail developed technologies, based on its flagship CertifiedEmail platform, that can do just that.

Over the last few months, Goodmail lead an industry initiative to leverage its unique enhanced email technology, and to introduce interactivity and "Web 2.0" capabilities into email. The interest we generated is enormous, the response from the email ecosystem electrifying, and the very large partners who have so far participated in the initiative extremely gratifying.

These are exciting times for the email ecosystem, Goodmail, and for me.

Daniel T Dreymann
President and Co-Founder