Topica announced a collaboration with eBay to integrate eBay "ecommerce buttons" directly into HTML emails created with the Topica Email Publisher service. Topica is an email list-hosting service that individuals and businesses can use to send mass emails to their customers or subscribers. Now Topica publishers can add eBay buttons to those mailings so recipients can click those buttons and be taken directly to the eBay site.

The "Bid Now" and "Buy Now" buttons link to individual eBay items, so email recipients can click a button and be taken directly to individual items for sale. There are also "View All My Items at eBay" buttons and "Visit My eBay Store" buttons.

Topica entered into a relationship with PayPal in May of this year, before eBay purchased the online payment service. Topica publishers can create secure PayPal "Buy It" buttons directly within the Topica application while creating mailings.

Topica requires its publishers to get approval from recipients before adding them to their lists, calling itself a permission-based service. Topica released a double opt-in feature last week, and it released a Customer Protection Tool (CPT). CPT is a monitor that examines each list imported into Topica and looks for irregularities that could suggest that the list of names is not permission-based. With this tool, any list that is questionable is automatically "locked" and unable to send until a member of the Topica policy team reviews with the list owner the provenance of the list.

Users of other email list-hosting services have been suspended for soliciting eBay members' email addresses, however. As a result, there is confusion among eBay members as to what eBay allows in the way of creating customer mailing lists.

eBay spokesperson Kevin Pursglove did not say whether the Topica buttons were eBay-sanctioned. A Topica spokesperson said, "We don't have an official partnership with eBay but we worked in collaboration with the teams at eBay to develop this feature, which is eBay-sanctioned."

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