In response to “Re: Stop Adding Me to Your Email List”

Justin Owen is director of The Good & The Brave, a digital consultancy company in Bath that creates online solutions to engage, win and retain customers.

“I think that the whole ‘permission email’ area is pretty grey and if it’s not policed properly by us, the implementers / guardians of online marketing, then the whole industry could end up with some serious problems.

“We were recently approached by an award winning PR/Marketing agency to do some email marketing work. Their client had a database of 20K+ contacts but they couldn’t tell us exactly how they’d acquired their details. Some had used their services (and in their admission, often over 2 years ago), some had left business cards at exhibitions / with members of their staff and some had been purchased. We said that LEGALLY they could send to these people, but ETHICALLY we couldn’t / wouldn’t send out to these contacts, as they had not specifically asked to receive email communication from them. We stressed to the agency that:

A) The response rates would undoubtedly be low
B) Unsubscribe rates high
C) Reports of the email as spam – possibly high
D) Damage to the brand likely to occur
E) A majority of email marketing platforms wouldn’t let them send out due to the integrity of the list

The result: The MD stamped her feet (no seriously!) and said that she just wanted the campaigns to be sent to these people. We declined the business and went on our way. They haven’t called back, but that’s the price we were willing to pay.

This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last I’m sure. In the past, I’ve had a client blacklisted by Spamhaus because they were perceived to be spamming by repeatedly sending to contacts that weren’t opening their emails (av. 15% response from 15K database). In the end, so many people reported them for spamming that Spamhaus ordered all our servers be shut down. Our advice had been to properly manage and reduce their list to only openers and permission subscribers to increase response rates and effectiveness – they ignored us but continued to ask us for ways of increasing the open rates. They were so afraid of losing numbers off their database rather than increasing conversions from the people that actually wanted their information. In the end, it bit them on the ass if you’ll excuse my language.

Anyway, I reckon that sums up a fair few of the reasons why I would never ever recommend that people just add people to their newsletters without them asking specifically first.”

Thank you Justin for your honesty and integrity!