Bonded Sender, the paid-for whitelist has recently changed to Sender Score Certified.
The scheme is used by many ISP's including Hotmail as there only form of whitelist. The original concept was to post a bond and any spam complaints generated would have $20 deducted from this. The theory being that no spammer could afford to work on this basis while a genuine permission based sender would not generate many complaints.
The scheme received criticism on two sides. Firstly is seemed to make no difference to deliverability rates with Hotmail. A report by Pivotal Veracity (see page 12 of report) suggested Bonded Sender made no difference to deliverability.
Secondly the entry requirements were inflexible. This E-Consultancy forum posting highlights the problems they had getting onto the Bonded Sender scheme. They had received 2 spam complaints in nearly a million emails sent and were refused entry onto the scheme. With it being easier to report something as spam than it is to unsubscribe these thresholds seem unfairly strict.
However Bonded Sender has now changed to Sender Score Certified and no bond is involved but now an annual licence dependant on how many messages are sent each month. No recent research exists to suggest how this has now helped deliverability but the general feeling from industry people is quite mixed.
Any Maxemail customer can join the scheme and we will provide you a dedicated IP address for your mailings. Interested parties should visit http://www.senderscorecertified.com for further information and the latest pricing.
