Feb 06 2009
A Belated Privacy Day Top 10
In case you didn’t know it, January 28 was Data Privacy Day, celebrated in 29 countries worldwide! While we weren’t able to procure any Rick Astley appearances or even a severely miscalculated power slide by Bruce Springsteen, we did manage to check in with our resident privacy and compliance expert, Ben Isaacson. Below, Ben I. gives a quick run-down on the things that the truly responsible email marketers among us should never, ever, ever do!
Top 10 Things Responsible Email Marketers Should NEVER Do:
- Never send an email to recipients who have complained and ask them, “Why did you press the spam button…I thought you liked our stuff?”
- Never personalize emails by casually dropping Big Brother-ish web analytics data; “Since you opened and clicked through 4 of the last 6 emails, we thought you’d like this offer.”
- Never further personalize emails by saying, “We saw you shopped for 3 hours the other night for this exact item, so here it is!”
- Never require customers to register (or login) before they can unsubscribe from your list.
- If you append Experian INSOURCE® (or other) demographic profiles, never over-share non-personally identified information; “Since you are a single male over 35 who loves dogs, we thought you’d also love this.”
- Never share email lists with partners.
- Never embed registration forms in emails.
- Never tell users they must reconfirm their list subscription by clicking through and providing all of their personal information.
- Never use Refer-A-Friend technology to automatically add forwarded friends to your email list.
- Never mail your unsubscribed recipients and say; “We know you unsubscribed, but our Email Service Provider told us it was OK to keep mailing you!” :-)
Happy (Belated) Data Privacy Day!
Thanks for the comment some usefull advice here thanks for sharing.
One small thing (it’s actually a little ironic), your Privacy policy [http://www.emailresponsibly.com/privacy-policy/] is 404 and returning the error:
404 – The Server can not find it !
The post or the page that you are looking for, is not available at this time. It could have been moved / deleted.
Please browse through the archives / search through the site.
Cheers,
Matt
@emailkarma
Thanks for pointing that out, Matt. It looks like some of our pages got flagged as ‘private’ when we upgraded our software this month! All fixed now, though.
I missed this holiday, but appreciate anything that honors personal privacy and freedom…best to keep your privacy policy up to date.
Put this date on your calendars for next year. Yes, I am a privacy advocate.
[...] point in the conversation that I was reminded of Ben Isaacson’s post on our site last month, “A Belated Privacy Day Top 10.” In case you missed it, Ben’s piece included the following tip to responsible online [...]
[...] year on Data Privacy Day, I offered our readers a list of The Top 10 Things An Emailer Should Never Do. This year, I’m paying tribute to Data Privacy Day in a slightly different way — I’m asking [...]