Two weeks ago I announced that we’re working on building an email marketing service. As we lead up to the launch of our service, I want to talk about why we’re headed in this direction, some of the features we’re including in version 1.0, why our service is important, how it’s going to keep our customers compliant with laws and regulations, and email marketing in general. I won’t go into too much detail but if you would like to learn more, feel free to email our sales team.

For those of you who are not familiar with the federal CAN-SPAM laws and why compliance is important, I highly recommend reading the following:

- The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

One of the biggest reasons we decided to develop an email marketing service is provide our customers with the ability to send bulk email the right way. It is essential that we help our customers with CAN-SPAM compliance issues and use best practices when sending bulk email through our system. We want to make it really easy for them to communicate with their recipients in a manner that complies with the law and helps them use best practices while keeping them from being mistaken for spammers. In fact, version 1.0 of our email marketing service focuses on compliance and best practices more so than whiz-bang features—like templates, for example (but they’re coming soon, don’t worry).

Some of the compliance management features we’ve built include the following:

- One-click to unsubscribe for each email recipient
- Sender mailing address appears in the footer of each outgoing email
- Ability to report abuse after unsubscribing (optional)

We want to make it easy for people to unsubscribe from emails sent using our service and report abuse, if necessary. Likewise, we want to ensure that senders are including information about their company in the footer of each email, mailing address included.

As many of you know, we are located in the heart of Blacksburg inside the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. We are all deeply saddened by the events that took place on our campus on Monday. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of the family and friends who were in any way affected by these horrific events.

All of our employees are okay, although almost everyone knows at least someone who was directly affected, including a coworker’s husband who was shot in the head while sitting in class. Luckily, he is out of the hospital and back home with his family.

Below are blog posts from Webmailers who have expressed their thoughts on this tragedy. The first post is a recount of the horror in Norris Hall by the husband of our coworker who was shot.

- Saved by the Blood

- Tonight on our Drill Field

- What a Terrible Day

- Thoughts and Prayers

- Crazy Day in Blacksburg

- Shaken in Blacksburg

- Hokie Nation

- Hokies Love Virginia Tech

- A Hokie Nation, Devastated

As an email hosting company, our customers and prospects are always asking us if they can send bulk email through our email hosting system. But in order to protect the integrity of our network, and because we don't currently support things like one-click unsubscribe, bounced messages, and other features needed to be CAN-SPAM compliant, we've always said no. And our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) backs up that stance.

We're not the only email company or ISP to have a strict AUP, and for good reason. But the reality is that businesses still want to communicate with customers, prospects, vendors, partners, etc., via email. They want to be able to send emails to a lot of people at one time. And I'm not talking about spammers. In fact, even here at Webmail, we've run up against our own AUP and we've had to concoct crazy one-off solutions just to be able to email our customers.

So without further ado, I would like to formally announce that we're currently developing the first version of our email marketing service, codenamed Outreach. As per our normal way of doing things, we plan to release version 1.0 and then continue to improve the service from there. This service will be completely legitimate and we're going to be very strict about what can and cannot be sent out (i.e., spam, of any sort, will not be tolerated and will not make it out of our system).

In the coming weeks, I will post more details as to the features that will be included in version 1.0, as well as the associated pricing. In the meantime, please feel free to comment on this blog or add ideas to Idea Central to let us know what you would like to see built into this service. You can also email us directly if you'd like an early version of the service.

If you're a reseller, you can now offer your customers a private-label version of Webmail Mobile. You can't customize it yet, but we've removed all reference to our company name.

The webmail sites are already set up. Simply open a web browser on your mobile device and add a /mobile to the end of your webmail site URL.

Please continue to use Idea Central let us know how you would like to see Webmail Mobile (and our other products and services) evolve.