How to Run an Ethical Mail List? 41
jfray_2k5 asks: "I've recently been hired as the Senior SysAd for a successful online advertising company and am in quite a dilemma. See, the company had previously been involved in quite a few seedy email businesses, and lets just say that we need to get our Haus in order. So, my question comes down to: what are acceptable and ethical ways to promote targeted offers to email users? Obviously, harvesting is out, and blanket spams don't really work for us (as we're a performance based company, and UCE simply doesn't perform for advertisers). I'm expecting a plethora of flames for this post, but I am serious in that I want to make things better for everyone. Other than enforcing CANSPAM (which is a total joke), and enforcing double opt-in, single opt-out on all of our lists, what are some other other ways we can do this the right way?"
"Is there a right way? Or am I simply screwed? Any truly constructive suggestions are welcome, as I most certainly don't want myself to be known for running a spam[cannon|haus], yet I need to be able to provide truly targeted email to people that, believe or not, actually want them.
Once again, any help is appreciated."
Double opt-in should be enough. (Score:2, Interesting)
- opt-in isn't required to access any of your services (except of course the "service" of receiving your junk mail)
- the opt-in option isn't obscured or labeled ambiguously when initially signing up
- the opt-in isn't automatically selected every time someone does something on your site, forcing them to constantly un-opt-in
By not trying to trick people, you'll be treating you customers far better than the vast majority of legitimate online marketers.
The only drawback is that you may well find that when offered a real choice, no one actually wants to opt-in for your lists. (In which case the ethical choice would be to go out of business peacefully rather than reverting to spam tactics. . . although convincing your boss of that may prove difficult.)
P.S. While you're at it, offer people a choice of plain text email! Nothing pisses me off more than a company that insists on sending me html.
Actually (Score:3, Interesting)
As for administrating such a list, just make sure that
a) the people on the list might want the things you're advertising. this is basically up to the agency, not you. Its doubtful that if you feel something isn't going to work you can persuade anyone.
b) the list should keep people's addresses private, as in no bulk mailtos. simple common sense, that's probably already in place
c) replies should probably get forwarded to somewhere where your client can access and review them. remember that you're not just concerned about the potential customers, but the client as well.
Clean your existing lists! (Score:5, Interesting)
I get spam after spam from a few companies that swear they aren't spammers. I email them from a throwaway account complaining, but refuse to tell them my real email address, because that only makes it more valuable to spammers.
Don't get me wrong, I -know- they screen-scraped my email address from websites, usenet, whatever, because I tag my email address wherever I go (I have my own domain).
The way I see it, their list is tainted with people who don't want to be on it. Disclosing my email address, even if they are completely ethical, will only solve my problem. They'll continue spamming everyone else whose email address they have.
So I do my best to explain the issues to somebody higher up than the average grunt, and if I don't get through, I block them from my mail servers completely, for all users.
One example of these idiots are the people behind ScribeStudio, who insist that they aren't spamming, even though they are emailing me on an address that I only use in a single newsgroup that has nothing to do with their company or product.
what are acceptable and ethical ways to promote targeted offers to email users?
As many people have said, double opt-in is the only way to go, along with an unsubscribe link that actually works.
But you need to handle your existing list. Emailing them and telling them that they can unsubscribe is not good enough. All spammers say that. You need to email them and say "if you wish to continue to receive our mailings, click here".
The first thing your boss will say is "but hardly anybody will do that!" That is exactly the point of doing it. If "hardly anybody will do that", then that means that the majority of people on your list don't want to be on it and you are spamming them.