Once again, my inbox is inundated with marketing messages from various top-named brands using 3rd party email databases.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against 3rd party email lists, in fact I use them frequently in order to recruit new customers, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. 

The question I want to address is that of choice.  Let me give you an example.  I recently received a B2B communication from a well know small business software provider.  I received two emails from them using two different 3rd party email lists (not great I concede…a little deduping required methinks).  Nevertheless, it illustrates my point.  Given that I work for News International, my interest in small business software packages is limited at best.  Email A simply gave me one unsubscribe option, which was in effect “unsunscribe me from everything”, i.e. not just from the advertiser, but from any further comms from this 3rd party database.  Email B gave me the choice…OK, so I’m not interested in offers from this advertiser, so I have the opportunity to request no further emails from them.  However, I have no issue with remaining on the 3rd party list as I may be interested in offers from other advertisers.  The first supplier has lost me forever for no good reason, the second supplier now knows what type of offers I am not interested in which should help them to improve their targeting in future.

This idea of a two-tier unsubscribe seems like a no-brainer to me.  Yet, I still receive emails through third parties that don’t give me the choice.  I received one recently that only gave me the option of unsubscribing from “this advertiser”, i.e. there was no obvious way to remove myself from the list altogether.  Now, I can see that from the list owner’s point of view, they are thinking that if I can only unsubscribe from the advertiser, this will stop their database from shrinking, meaning they can still sell my email address to other clients.  The point they are overlooking is that my only choice is to click the spam button, block them, or add them to my junk list.  Even if this fails to have the desired effect, i.e. their next email comes from a different IP, my annoyance is such that a sale is out of the question!

There is still a place in the market for rented email lists, but only if the recipient remains in full control of what they receive.

Rupert Harrison
Data Planner News International
Chair of Best Practice & Data Hub, DMA Email Marketing Council