The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) provides links to 87 email list brokers. The DMA has been around since 1917, and is a recognized advocate for Direct Marketing professionals.
“…DMA advocates industry standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the entire direct marketing process…” continue reading
We know that acquiring leads is an important aspect of direct [email] marketing. It always has been. But as the permission marketing ethos becomes embraced by companies and, perhaps more importantly, demanded by recipients; the value of brokered lists and leads is becoming more and more debatable. As an example, something about the following seems creepy to me:
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Ok, perhaps registered voters, prescription drug users and Medicaid pensioners requested to be contacted via email by anyone having a product or service that is related to their political views or pharmaceutical needs. But if we consider that their name and email address is available to hundreds, nay thousands of marketers who decide to rent the list that they are on; something tells me that they won’t be too happy. Something tells me that messages they receive from those who acquired their information through a broker, rather than by their direct permission, will be considered to be spam.
What do you think? Do brokered email lists have a place in an age of permission marketing? If so, in what context and under what controls?
Comments
2 Responses to “The Conundrum of Permission Marketing with Brokered Lists”
The best brokered lists consist only of addresses where the user opted-in to explicitly receive third-party offers on the relevant topic, not just offers from the collecting organization. That said, the complaint rates are much higher for such campaigns and justifiably so from the users perspective.
Well said Jacob. One of the big problems that I see with brokered lists is even if a subscriber did ‘tick’ a box at some stage saying that he would be interested in receiving 3rd party emails that are relevant to him, he will quickly grow tired when that list is distributed to hundreds or thousands of marketers who ASSUME that their message will be relevant to him. Often, a subscriber to 3rd party emails isn’t really sure about what they are signing up to.
The beauty of permission marketing is that the recipient determines relevance; not the marketer. And this is becoming a demand by email recipients today. They want (and deserve to have) complete control over their inbox.