Re: [Asrg] 7.c Mass Mailers, reliability, and lack thereof

> Isn't that the definition of "opt-in"?  Someone came and said they 
> wanted to receive it?  (Whether the mailer verified that the idiot 
> who entered the email address is actually the owner of the address of 
> course is (unfortunately) a different issue.)
Yes, it is.  In an ideal (i.e. spam-free) world, I could just go off
to my hairdresser's website, slap my address in where it says "let me
know when you start using a new brand of shampoo", and that would be it.

Sure, there would occasionally be abuse-- someone could get pissed
at you and slam your name onto two dozen mailing lists, for example.
But in this dream spamn-free world that would only be a mild annoyance,
since you could just unsubscribe and be done with it.

The start of this thread was someone who lumped in genuine opt-in
marketing email with millions-of-addresses-on-CD spammers.  I wanted
to show that they are two very different things.



> But telling company A you want to receive something is *not* the same 
> as telling company B.
That depends upon who companies A and B are.

If company A is the abovementioned hairdresser, and company B provides
the actual mechanics of sending out the new-shampoo mail, then I think
it is the same thing.  This assumes, of course, that company B is
providing that service honestly and carefully, and doesn't use my
address for anything other than sending mail from my hairdresser.
(This is the kind of company I worked for.)


How about the next tier?  "We're providing you with this free service.
In exchange, you agree to let some of our buddies send you ads."  Can
that be workable?  While that email is generally less interesting to
the recipient, I think it can also be workable if it's done well.

In this case, the address would either need to be kept in-house, or
passed off to one responsible vendor who serves as an agent.  This
allows for a reliable single-point-of-unsubscribe mechanism for all
mail sent as a result of your affiliation with free-service-provider.
You definitely don't want the address passed off to multiple entities,
since turning off the flow would then be significantly more difficult.

I'm making some assumptions about the email vendors in all of this--
they promptly and reliably honor unsubscribe requests, carefully
protect the privacy and security of mailing lists, etc.  But there
*are* email vendors like that out there-- I worked for one.  (You would
not believe how many technical hoops I jumped through to ensure that
every single unsubscribe request was honored during every conceivable
flavor of system downtime.)  

They also impose some stringent restrictions on their clients about how
addresses are acquired and managed, to avoid sending mail to people who
don't want it.  I'll admit that most vendors are probably not quite as
good about this as they should be, but they *are* trying.

These vendors are as far from make-money-fast-with-a-bigger-penis-and-
hot-lolitas-and-viagra-to-15-million-addresses as you can get.

-Patti
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