Editor’s
Corner:
WANTING OUT OF OPTING OUT
The big battle going on to ban unsolicited e-mail echoes
one previously fought over unsolicited fax. The arguments are exactly
the same, but the players more powerful than before. Currently the
Direct Marketing Association is backing the "opt out"
approach, meaning that marketers could send e-mail to cold lists and
remove the names of those who ask to be taken off. The DMA is a big
organization with deep pocket members who stand to lose access to a hot
new untapped marketplace if the ban goes into effect.
Meanwhile we have the "opt in" camp that is busy developing
lists of consensual adults who want to receive commercial notices.
Postmaster Direct asks people to indicate what categories they are
interested in (See MWT March,
1997). Another company, BonusMail, offers
recipients gifts and prizes for reading promotions sent to their e-mail
boxes.
The Internet Marketing Council, has a different strategy. They want
to label messages that come from bonafide companies and reward both the
ISP’s and the recipients. When an IMC member blasts out to an ISP’s
entire user-base, recipients can opt-out of IMC’s list.
The trouble with all the opt-out strategies is that you have to allow
everyone the freedom to spam. With so many millions of users and abusers
online you might spend significant online time opting out from each
spammer’s list. The DMA has plans to build a national opt-out database
that would allow marketers to purge their lists. This would only work
with massive compliance, and the worst spammers are probably so
unprofessional they have not even heard of the DMA, let alone their
opt-out database.
The trouble with the opt-in approach is that it does not give direct
marketers the sanction to prospect online. So how do you build an opt-in
list?? Lots of promotion of web sites where registration can take place,
appropriate postings in newsgroups, etc. And then, of course, there is
direct snail mail. Opt-in approaches, ironically enough, only cut
marketing costs after you’ve found a prospect, not before.
If people are not really buying that much online, why do marketers
think they can increase sales by plopping their messages right into a
person’s private e-mail box?
I have to say that I’m much less enthusiastic about unsolicited
commercial e-mail now than I was ten years ago. When you’re a pioneer
and only one of handful doing it, it is thrilling to see the results.
But the novelty wears off. As more players enter the arena, it becomes
less novel, offensive even. And the response rates eventually flatten
off.
Enough of all of this, I say. I don’t want to opt-in, I don’t
want to opt-out. I just want to read "real" my e-mail in
peace.
