I see so many websites, especially smallerish companies, being as polite as possible when it comes to adding people to their emal list. The most common example I see is that a customer, as they’re making a purchase, actually has to click a box to agree to be subcribed to their emails. Worse is when they don’t even have this opportunity to subscribe. A little bit better is this “Subcribe me” box is automatically checked.
I think this is too much.
If a customer places an order with us, we take their email and add it to our email list automatically. If they order something through eBay and pay us through PayPal, we take their email and add it to our list even without them requesting it (never if they specfically request us not to though). If they make a phone order, we add their email. This is perfectly in line with most SPAM laws as we now have an existing relationship with this customer.
Of course, all of our emails make it perfectly easy to unsubscribe. Any every ‘new email’ blast, we get about 1% who do unsubcribe. We get about 0.05% who report us as spam (a figure that is close to our lists of customers who specifically opted in) but we also get about 0.5% (re: 0.005) people who buy.
Why throw away this opportunity to build an ongoing relationship with the customer??
He’s fine as per his original post and your quote.
Exceptions:
A business relationship in which contact information was obtained constitutes prior consent as long as a means to opt out was provided at the same time and continues to be provided with each such message and each message is about similar products or services by the same company.
Assuming that you are doing business worldwide you might want to have a read of the opt in laws covering Europe
Yes, direct marketing email messages may be sent only to subscribers who have given their prior consent (“opt-in”). Prior permission is required for business-to-consumer (B2C) communication covering all “natural persons”.
Exceptions:
A business relationship in which contact information was obtained constitutes prior consent as long as a means to opt out was provided at the same time and continues to be provided with each such message and each message is about similar products or services by the same company.
For business-to-business communication (B2B), i.e. “legal persons”, EU member states are free to make “opt-out” the minimum legislation. However, national legislation of the member states can require opt-in for B2B email, too.
If he does it over the phone without asking them if they want to be added to their email list, or if he does the online order without giving the option to opt out (have a checkbox to uncheck is giving the option - it’s not his fault if the user doesn’t pay attention), it could be pushing the spirit/intent of the law, if not the letter of it.
I really don’t approve of making a mechanism an opt-out process without it having been an opt-in within the first place. People should have the choice not to even get the subsequent email that their then forced to take action upon. Choice is a very important aspect of user-experience and unless you respect your visitors rights to privacy and not to be interrupted with unanticipated after effects (that may well leave them with a bad taste in their mouth) you’re only cheapening your reputation. I doubt anyone would like me turning up on their doorstep without an invite and advertising all sorts of junk (because they happened to give me their address during a sale)… why should email be any different, it can be just as invasive. However that being said I can understand your reasoning for wanting to get the word out to your customers, I just personally feel that business ethics (from the consumers satisfaction level) may have more sway in this case than legal presidence.
If you are ceratin what you are doing is legal, then go for it.
If it isn’t, then you have only yourself to blame for any consequences.
Imho another downside of automatically adding customer email addresses to mailing lists, whether it is legal or not, is that you risk being “bad mouthed” by customers, on website forums, blogs, twits etc, who only ever intended to be “one off” customers suddenly receiving unsolicited emails from you and then being made to go through a process to unsusbscribe, however easy it might be.
One disgruntled customer can do a lot of damage to the reputation of a business.
In many countries it’s legal to SPAM if you disclose information and have a way to optout but forget what’s illegaly and think customer experience, spam scores and long term sales.
If you let a user optout they get a choice up front. Many miss it, a few uncheck it. Pretty easy all around and while there can be some confusion, it’s a quick sell.
If you just add me to a list and start emailing you’ve got a great chance of losing me as a customer, period. Even worse many users will think of it as spam, hit report, and build up negative ratings on popular email services like gmail lessening your delivery rates. Conversion is about reaching people right, so when you do anything you should always be thinking about yourself as if you were the end user… If you were added to a list you never asked for and were never made aware of how would you consider that email?
As for the stats quoted, they’re pretty meaningless unless you can identify the people who would have opted out / not opted in and isolate the lift you got from forcing them into your list. It’s far better (for results, and overall ROI) to email more tailored messages to active users than to just blast a generic message to one list.
Courts don’t enforce the spirit of the law, they enforce the letter of the law.
He is completely compliant with the spam laws that I am aware of as he has a pre-existing customer relationship with these people and provides an easy opt-out function that he actually respects.
This is a business forum, so lets stick to facts here and not suppositions and personal opinions. I’m still waiting for the deluge of “I would never do business with you again if you e-mailed me after I bought something from you” crowd to chime in.
This is all well and good. But is usually done to strip mine the customer base.
I think a whole whopping lot of this depends on what happens after you add their name. And most people will send emails about aluminum siding to apartment dwellers, provided they have the email address sitting around.
That’s also within the technical letter of marketing – but it isn’t really in the spirit of marketing effectively. Strip mining the house list decreases lifetime customer value, which in itself is so alien a concept it might as well be astrophysics.
A split test of response rates between people who have specifically opted in and those who are added by default would be a more interesting topic.
