ClickZ: Can the DMA and Interactive Marketers Kiss and Make Up?

Rebecca Lieb points out that the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA's) new leadership is changing the way it treats email marketing, and perhaps by extension the way it is treating online marketer members. Many online marketers wrote off the DMA under Robert Wientzen, when he gutted recommendations that would have put the DMA on the white had side of the spam issue. Instead, bowing to pressure from the slicker elements in the direct marketing field, he made an all-out effort to define spam not as unwanted commercial email, but fraudulent email. Now the DMA is pushing hard for members to adopt Sender ID, an origin authentication standard. The fact that the IAB is even addressing the real spam issue at all is progress. That they are putting themselves on the anti-spam side of the issue may portend better things to come.