Disposable or Temporary Addresses

Mark Brownlow has a really good post up today about disposable and temporary addresses and how they affect marketers trying to build an opt-in list.
I use tagged addresses for all my signups, and have for more than 10 years now. It lets me track who I gave an address to and if this mail is contrary to what I signed up for or the address has leaked, I can shut down mail to that address entirely.
Tagged addresses also have another function. One of our local brew pubs has a rewards program, spend money there, get points. As part of the signup process, they requested an email address. All the email I have received from them has been clearly branded, well designed, they are an example of how to use email right. That is until last week. Last week I received an email to the tagged address from some survey company. The survey company provided no branding, nothing.

Dear Passport Member
As a valued member of our passport program, your opinion is extremely important to us.  We are constantly looking to improve our menu offerings, passport privileges and manner in which we serve our most treasured guests.
Simply fill out the following survey and we will award you a bonus of 200 points within 2 weeks of completion.  Deadline to complete the survey is May 19th.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts about our program and how we can serve you even better in the future.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/XXXXXX

My first thought was that our local brew pub somehow leaked my information out and I was getting some weird phishing or tracking spam. After a bit of examination and looking at the survey (again, not branded and with HTML looking like it was done in 1997) I did realize that this was probably a real survey commissioned by the brewpub and outsourced to someone else who executed it badly.
Recipients signing up to lists with tagged or disposable email address can be some of the most savvy customers. If marketing and emails are done well, this kind of customer can be a bonus. If marketing and emails are done poorly, the subscriber will leave.

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As a consumer, a signup process for an online-only experience that requires a postal address annoys and frustrates me to no end. Just recently I purchased a Nike + iPod sport kit. Part of the benefit to this, is free access to the Nike website, where I can see pretty graphs showing my pace, distance and time. When I went to go register, however, Nike asked me to give them a postal address. I know there are a lot of reasons they might want to do this, but, to my mind, they have no need to know my address and I am reluctant go give that info out. An attempt to register leaving those blanks empty was rejected. A blatantly fake street address (nowhere, nowhere, valid zipcode) did not inhibit my ability to sign up at the site.
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