Beware - Is Your Opt-In Bureau Really Opt-In?
With the increasing recognition that spam is bad business, some of the people who have offered spam services in the past have switched to lying about their services. These con artists will try to tell you their lists are entirely opt-in, when in fact they are opt-out services using addresses from one of the email address CDs, or scraped from newsgroups and web sites.
Usually these con shops are single person businesses run out of a garage, with web sites that try to make them seem like much larger businesses. Common tricks used to give a false impression of size, respectability and security include:
Using an impressive sounding business name. Often they will illegally trade under this business name without registering it.
Claiming to be a company, while operating as an unincorporated sole trader.
Putting pictures of a large, sleek and modern building on their web site. The impression you are supposed to get is that they have offices in the building.
Claiming to have offices in multiple cities, often in apparently exclusive areas of those cities, when in reality the address is in a mail forwarding and telephone answering service. To try to give an added sense of realism, the might modify the address slightly - for example, instead of saying the address is "Box 301, 199 Any Street", they might say "Suite 301, 199 Any Street".
If you become a victim one of these con artists, they can do a lot more damage to your own reputation than you ever thought possible. Recipients will associate your business with spam - they will almost invariably have no way of knowing that the mailing did not come from your business.
There are several things you can do to avoid being caught:
If somebody offers to sell you a list of "opt-in" addresses, don't take up that offer. You cannot buy lists of genuinely opt-in addresses, period. If somebody offers to sell you such a list, you can be sure it's a scam. Opt-In lists are too valuable to sell - those who own such lists only ever sell services that utilise those lists.
If you contract somebody to mail to an "opt-in" list they claim to have:
Get them to answer the following questions in writing, signed by a representative of the bureau:
How did you build up your mailing lists?
Have all the people on your mailing the list explicitly asked to be on them?
Are your lists separated out into categories so that people only get mailings in subject areas they have requested?
Try to get a written contract, with liquidated damages in the event of a breach, guaranteeing the answers to the questions above.
If you haven't dealt with that bureau before, don't pay in advance, except by credit card. If you pay by credit card, and the services are fraudulent, you can dispute the charge with the card issuer.
Obtain direct references from previous customers (that is, make sure you can talk to the referees yourself - don't accept a written testimonial sent via the bureau).
Look up company and trading names in the National Names Index to make sure they are genuine.
Visit the offices of the bureau to make sure they really exist.
If there is any sign that the bureau is not being entirely above board, or that the people targeted have not explicitly requested the kind of advertising material they will be sent, do not deal with that supplier - the reputation of your business is too valuable to risk.
For more information on safe and ethical email marketing, see our Information for Businesses section.