Innovating Email List Marketing

Every once in a while we’re approached about the concept of a global opt-out button. This is the idea of letting those who want to unsubscribe click a button or go to a website which will remove them from every marketing list in the world. This would almost be like a “no contact” list that the telemarketing industry adopted a few years ago.

At Marketfish, we support this concept. We started the company with the premise that list-based marketing can be effective but only if those offers go to only those people who 1) asked for them via a proper permissioning process and 2) are most likely to get excited about the offer in the first place. Let me explain:

At Marketfish, we only work with list owners who permission their lists. To be more specific, the recipients on the list are there because they’ve agreed to 3rd party offers. Before we sign a contract with any list owner, we first take them through a vetting process. During this process, we guarantee from our list owners that they have asked their customers to receive 3rd party offers via email marketing. Additionally, the list owners promise to time stamp when the recipient agreed – both the time and the day of the formal approval.

Also, Marketfish allows advertisers to target their recipients by narrowing the lists by demographic and psycho-graphic data such as gender, occupation, and interests. This way, the advertisers can really hone in on those recipients who will be most receptive to the offer they had in mind. This reduces the chance for unwanted emails.

So in the same vein, a global out would be in line with the philosophy of the company. First, it keeps the list owners honest and provides a second way to ensure that someone who doesn’t want to be on a list isn’t on one. Second, it will be better for the advertiser, since removing non-responders from a marketing list will improve the overall performance of their campaigns.

The bigger question for me is: how does a company, or for greater impact, an industry, implement something like a global opt-out? It requires participation from list owners, as well as transmission bureaus like us. I say both because transmission bureaus can’t do it alone. Companies like Marketfish, Constant Contact and Exact Target don’t own the list that recipients are on. We are the technology that sends the email. It’s really the list owner themselves that must agree on a global opt-out and participate. Once there is widespread global opt-out adoption, technology providers can help enforce it.

We look forward to this ongoing dialogue. And if a global opt-out is adopted. We’ll be there to support it.

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global opt-out, spam, third-party, unsubscribe