IAR: AOL Floats E-Mail Reports for Marketers

AOL, long the subject of email marketer tirades for perniciously dumping permission emails to its users, will now test waters with marketers to see if they'd be willing to pay for a report indicating why their emails are getting deep-sixed. In effect, the Internet service provider will trash the marketer emails and then take money to tell the marketers precisely why they failed to reach the readers, who presumably requested the information.

Coincidentally, MarketingWonk launched a free service today giving away the very same piece of information. So far, in every case, the answer has been: "It's because you're sending email to customers of a screwed up ISP."

Some industry wags anticipate AOL's premium report will actually serve as a device through which it will start charging some email marketers to be able to access the AOL subscribers.