Last week, Chief Marketer ran an article listing the Top 10 E-mail Appending Mistakes to Avoid. While the article has some good information, I think it missed the mark. In most cases the first mistake companies make when deciding to do an appending run on a customer list is: to append the list.
There is no permission with an appended list. None. Theoretically, senders can kinda get around the lack of permission by sending one email asking users to opt-in. However, every company I’ve ever suggested that to has recoiled in shock and horror. Their protests are all eerily similar.
- “But our vendors! They make us pay for all the addresses, not just the ones that opt-in!”
- “It’s not cost effective to just send mail to people who ask for it.”
- “We let our vendors handle the opt-in for us.”
- “They’re our customers already, so of course we can send them email.”
While I think the advice given in the article will prevent a sender from completely ruining their reputation by appending, the whole concept of appending is completely counter to permission based marketing.
Just because I buy something from a company does not mean I want to be added to their mailing list. Even worse are the companies that ask for an email address and, when the recipient declines to provide one, they decide to do an append and “find” one. The customer had the opportunity to give a vendor an address, that generally means they don’t want email from that company.
Email marketing is not just a race to see who can acquire the most email addresses. Appending is only slightly less problematic than harvesting email addresses and purchasing lists and that is only if companies actually take some time to do it right. I have found few companies who actually do it right and many, many more who end up with major delivery problems because they’re sending unexpected, unwanted spam to their customers.
RSS - Posts