DM News: Address Book Seen as Way Around Spam Filters

With AOL and MSN using subscribers' address books as a major indicator of whether or not an incoming email is spam, marketers are having to adjust their strategies in order to avoid filters. On a technical level, they are increasingly dropping dynamically-created return addresses for tracking. Various studies estimate that about one in five emails gets filtered at the ISP level.

And on a human level, they are starting to come to terms with the need to provide useful enough content to not just receive emailing permission, but to actually make the leap onto reader's address books. This will likely take a form of interactivity to work. People do not put newsletters in their address books because they have no need to remember the address. Discussion lists, however, are a much more logical candidates for inclusion, as participants need to remember the address to take part in the discussion.