Stiles Hired at Goodmail, Company Confirms
Charles Stiles, the former postmaster at AOL, has signed on with Goodmail Systems as the e-mail authentication firm’s new vice president of worldwide business development, Goodmail has confirmed.
It was reported in Direct Newsline Wednesday that Stiles might end up at Goodmail after being part of a 2,000-employee layoff at AOL in October.
Stiles will report to David Atlas, Goodmail’s senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing.
Under Goodmail’s business model, e-mailers pay a small fee to have their e-mail certified as non-spam and guaranteed to be delivered with graphics and links intact at participating inbox providers, which include the seven largest in North America, such as AOL and Yahoo.
AOL was the first Internet service provider to announce a relationship with Goodmail. Both firms came under political fire as some groups claimed it was a step toward two-tiered e-mail service where mailers that paid would experience better delivery that those that didn’t. That controversy has long since died down.
In the meantime, however, Goodmail has had trouble getting a critical mass of mailers to buy its service, according to sources. During the last year, Goodmail has made a series of extremely aggressive offers to get e-mailers to try the product, but interest has remained lukewarm, sources say.
The company has also lost some high-level executives recently and it isn’t clear whether they left on their own or were pushed out.
Richard Gingras stepped aside as Goodmail’s CEO in July, leaving John Ouren and Daniel Dreymann as co-CEO’s. Ouren, however, left Goodmail less than two months later to take a job at online market research technology provider MarketTools.
Goodmail also recently reportedly lost Ken Hirschman, its vice president of business development.
Stiles for a number of years has been known to e-mail service providers and marketers as the public face of AOL’s e-mail team. He was often a speaker at industry events. It is unclear who will take that role at AOL now that Stiles is gone.
Stiles said he harbors no ill will toward his former employer. “AOL is a wonderful company,” he said.
