One of the downsides of having to prevent spam is that lots of legitimate e-mail gets blocked because it appears to be spam-like. Because of the volumes that publishers of opt-in newsletters, marketing content and other legitimate information send, these organizations tend to be some of the biggest victims of spam-filtering systems.

One of the many approaches to improving the deliverability of good e-mail is SuretyMail, an accreditation service that provides information about senders' mailing practices. When an organization signs up for SuretyMail, it allows the service to provide real-time information on these practices prior to delivery. An ISP can, therefore, check on a sender's reputation each time it receives e-mail from that sender, providing it with a high level of confidence about the legitimacy of the e-mail it is about to process. SuretyMail pricing starts at $150 per month for bulk corporate mailers.

Last week, SuretyMail announced its partnership with Delivery Monitor, allowing e-mail senders to perform real-time tracking of how their e-mail is delivered - whether it reaches its intended target or is quarantined as spam. The combined services of both companies promise to help organizations of all sizes to improve their e-mail deliverability rates and to make e-mail a more effective marketing vehicle than it is today.

There are a growing number of organizations that offer services designed to improve e-mail delivery rates. This will be an increasingly critical part of organizational marketing efforts moving forward for the same reasons that spamming continues to be such a popular activity - the more e-mails that you can deliver in a marketing campaign, the greater the likelihood that your efforts will be successful.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.