Entrepreneur Aims to ‘Put E-mail Marketers Out of Business’

Say one thing for John Halloran: He doesn’t think small.

The San Juan, PR-based precious metals trader is sick to death of unsolicited commercial e-mail and claims to have come up with a business scheme to kill it once and for all.

And he’s not just talking about fraudulent spam, either.

In his quest to eradicate unsolicited commercial e-mail, Halloran has launched a free Web-based electronic messaging service called Woomail at Woomail.com.

To receive regular commercial e-mail from a specific merchant, Woomail subscribers assign a so-called merchant key by supplying the merchant’s domain to their Woomail account.

Creating a merchant key results in a randomly generated alphanumeric e-mail address to be used only when dealing with that merchant.

As a result, if any e-mail comes to that address from any domain other than that of the merchant who was assigned the key, the subscriber will know the marketer has sold or shared his or her e-mail address.

The subscriber also decides the duration of the merchant key: anywhere from eight weeks to lifetime.

Messages from unrecognized domains get delivered, but their subject lines are red and they come with a ringing bell icon indicating a “merchant alert.”

The subscriber can delete a specific merchant’s key any time, and as a result, stop getting e-mail from that merchant and any affiliates, or “partners” who have been supplied the address.

“If I delete that key, the marketer will simply get an auto-responder saying the person is protected and the e-mail can’t be delivered,” said Halloran. “But they can contact you as long as that key is active. What it comes down to is permission-based marketing, but with the recipients having complete control.”

For example, Halloran said, when his wife recently bought some Debbie Meyer Green Bags online, within 24 hours of placing the order, her Woomail address for that particular merchant was hit with e-mails from 35 other merchants.

“She got 35 messages, but basically all she had to do was delete that key,” he said. “Now anytime a merchant uses that e-mail address, they’re going to get an auto-responder saying the message can’t be delivered.”

He added: “I read their terms and conditions that said they’ll share people’s information with their partners, but they didn’t make it clear when she was checking out. That’s not permission-based marketing.”

Hollaran swears he’s not anti-sales or -marketing.

“Without sales the world doesn’t turn,” he said. “It’s just that spam is going to eliminate the cost-benefit of using e-mail in the future. If someone doesn’t do something about it now, we’ll lose e-mail.”

Halloran said he is using Google AdWords on Woomail to generate some revenue, but that he makes seven figures a year as a precious metals trader and money is not his first priority for this venture.

“I did this just for my own benefit because each one of my brokers get 500 spam messages a day,” he said. “After I built it for myself, I realized there must be other people who want this application.” He asked that this newsletter not divulge the name of his company to avoid any backlash this article may generate.

According to Halloran he mainly plans to rely on word-of-mouth to gain subscribers. He said 7,000 people signed up for Woomail accounts last month.