Opt-in Reconfirmation in the Wild

What’s an opt-in reconfirmation email? Also called, as fellow blogger Al
Iverson mentioned lately, a re-engagement email, or a permission pass email.
Al links to DJ Waldow’s write up on Shop.org’s recent re-engagement
strategy, and today I see that Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse,
talking about Coach’s turn at culling their list through this process. What’s interesting here is that, according to Janine, Coach didn’t target this reconfirmation email only at recipients who never open or click. She says she does both, regularly, and received this email message anyway. Another friend of mine, who is also a Coach subscriber, reports to me that she receives regular emails from them (most recently as just about
ten days ago), but that she did not receive this reconfirmation email message.

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Yet more data verification

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Spamfilters are stupid

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One of the arguments I was making is that people are only going to give accurate information if they trust the website that is collecting information. I do, strongly, believe this. I also believe very strongly that websites collecting information need to do so defensively. It is the only way you can get good information.
This ties in with an earlier post about a website that collects email addresses from any visitor, then turns around and submits those addresses to webforms. Hundreds of mailing lists have already been corrupted by this group. They are a prime reason companies must design address collection process defensively. There are people who do bad things, who will take an opportunity to harass senders and recipients. This company is not the first, nor will they be the last to commit such abuses.
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