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Yesterday, Yahoo announced its new social, extensible email Inbox, almost a year after Founder Jerry Wang unveiled it during his keynote address at CES. This new destination blends social media with smart inbox functionality to filter “important” emails and present those towards the top of your Inbox, pushing newsletters and other commercial communications down towards the bottom.

Because this functionality is linked to Yahoo’s social media functionality – you have to befriend someone in order for their emails to take priority – this will initially spell bad news for email and social media marketing gurus. It is unclear whether or not they will allow individuals to befriend a brand, like they can on Facebook or MySpace. And if they do, how will they determine who has the right to send priority email on behalf of that brand?

If you haven’t tested it yet, this might be a good time to look at StrongMail partner Goodmail. Their Certified Email product is a paid service that can ensure priority Inbox delivery to Yahoo though this period of uncertainty.

With 275 million users worldwide, Yahoo represents approximately half of the world’s webmail accounts. These changes will pose significant challenges to email marketers unless Yahoo offers them a way to engage with their recipients. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see how unpredictable inbox placement will affect our powerful marketing channel.

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