Internet and e-mail policy and practice including Notes on Internet E-mail

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Home :: Email 26 Feb 2010 Another reason not to buy mailing lists Email A recent online article in BtoB magazine about Sending e-mail when you don't have an opt-in has caused quite a stir in the online marketing and anti-spam community, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hoped. The article is about a company called Netprospex which sells and trades contact lists, for the specific purpose of marketing. Other people have noted that buying a list from them and mailing to it is a quick route to getting yourself booted off your provider, but I was idly wondering, since single messages to real people are generally OK, if their individual contacts were useful. Netprospex lets you do a search of their database and provides redacted responses, with the details available if you pay. I live in a very small town in upstate New York, so I searched for people within five miles of here, and even though the names were redacted to initials, I recognized most of them. They claim that all the entries were "verified" recently, but this database is garbage. They are 72% sure I am the Domain Assurance Council, even though we shut it down two years ago. They are 54% sure that the principal of the elementary school who retired five years ago is still there, and "verified" it in September. Most excitingly, they have the highly influential president, vice president, and treasurer of the local snowmobile club, well, actually, the people who were a couple of years ago, leaders of this organization which I believe has an annual budget well into the three figures. So not only are you likely to lose your net access, you're not likely to get any business either. As people keep finding out the hard way, legitimate marketing is hard, and there aren't any shortcuts. I was also surprised to see in the comments on the article a favorable response from a VP at ReturnPath starting "Great article and good counsel." (It's the first comment if you follow this link.) I was under the impression that they required their clients to mail only to receipients who've opted in, but it looks like they're reconsidering. posted at: 01:18 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments posted at: 01:18 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments comments...        (Jump to the end to add your own comment) VP, Return Path Thanks, John. I am the VP from Return Path quoted in your blog, and just want to clear the record for you and your readers. I thought I was pretty clear in my comments that we do NOT recommend mailing to opt out lists. (We require it for some of our certification/whitelist programs and strongly recommend it for everyone.) In fact, I think I state in my comment that I don't recommend anyone add sales contacts (like those you can get from NetPrpospex) to an email marketing (bulk) file. My sincere apologies if that message got lost or was not obvious. As you note in your column here, it's also so important to vet partners, especially data partners. Claims for quality and recency can be easily checked by doing what you did - either look for yourself on the database, or sign up for the program and see what sort of messages start to arrive. Free resources like dnsstuff.com and senderscore.org (the latter owned by Return Path) are great for seeing if data partners are on blacklists and have a good sender reputation. Thanks. Stephanie (by Stephanie Miller 26 Feb 2010 08:34) Add your comment... Note: all comments require an email address to send a confirmation to verify that it was posted by a person and not a spambot. The comment won't be visible until you click the link in the confirmation. Unless you check the box below, which almost nobody does, your email won't be displayed, and I won't use it for other purposes.   Name: Email: you@wherever (required, for confirmation) Title: (optional) Comments: Show my Email address Save my Name and Email for next time

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