More on opt-out for B2B marketing

There is still a bit of discussion going on around the HBR article on how B2B mail should be opt-out not opt in on various delivery blogs. Over on the Blue Sky Factory blog new daddy (congratulations!) DJ writes a post about why he thinks opt-out in any context is a poor marketing decision.
One of his commenters follows up with a long comment about how recipients shouldn’t get angry when they get unsolicited email from a company they have interacted with.

We decide who we think may want to hear from us. The decision is not scientific, we just look at their profile and add them if we see fit. If someone in Sales gets a contact name and someone in Marketing ends up contacting that person, we’ve usually done our homework and know a bit about why we’re attempting to contact said person.

Fundamentally, though, it’s not about the sender. It’s all about the recipient.
It’s certainly possible that the company above actually considers the recipient and really are trying to send mail only to those folks who want it. But, the vast majority of companies who preach “opt-out” aren’t putting that much time or thought into the decision of whether or not to send mail to a particular recipient. If they get an email address, they add that address to marketing lists and commence sending mail.
One to one mail is OK and can be done on an opt-out basis. This is particularly true when a potential customer gives you an email address and asks for more information. But bulk email on an opt-out basis quickly overwhelms the recipient and their mailbox. An overflowing mailbox does not lead to receptive customers. Respect your contacts, respect their time and their space and don’t add them to newsletters or email marketing lists without their permission.

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What do I mean by that? I mean that the address collection practices and the mailing processes used by self-proclaimed legitimate email marketers are sloppy. They don’t really care about individual recipients, they just care about the numbers. They buy addresses, they use affiliates, they dip whole limbs in the co-reg pool; all told their subscription practices are very sloppy. Because they didn’t scrape or harvest the email address, they feel justified in claiming the recipient asked for it and that they are legitimate.
They don’t really care that they’re mailing people who don’t want their mail and really never asked to receive it. What kinds of practices am I talking about?
Buying co-reg lists. “But the customer signed up, made a purchase, took an online quiz and the privacy policy says their address can be shared.” The recipient doesn’t care that they agreed to have their email address handed out to all and sundry, they don’t want that mail.
Arguing with subscribers. “But all those people who labeled my mail as spam actually subscribed!!!” Any time a mailer has to argue with a subscriber about the validity of the subscription, there is a problem with the subscription process. If the sender and the receiver disagree on whether there was really an opt-in, the senders are rarely given the benefit of the doubt.
Using affiliates to hide their involvement in spam. A number of companies use advertising agencies that outsource acquisition mailings that end up being sent by spammers. These acquisition mailings are sent by the same spammers sending enlargement spam. The advertiser gets all the benefits of spam without any of the consequences.
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