In several occasions and for diverse reasons, I’ve been targeted with the opt-in /opt-out marketing tactics. By that I refer to the vendor’s request for permission to – broadly speaking – market to its database.
Most of these requests assume acceptance by omission; so if I don’t want to be included in their sweep to get names I have to specifically click to be counted off.
I am pretty sure this practice is not illegal. Having said that I think it is pretty dumb, mainly because:
- I’d rather have people explicitly expressing interest in my product/campaign
- Even though I might be saving a bit of time to some of my clients/job seekers, I am sure that the ‘no response means yes’ alternative trawls more crap than it’s worth it (e.g. invalid addresses, inactive accounts, old details/resumes)
I hope it becomes increasingly evident that the value of distribution lists does not reside on volumes, but in business results (placeable candidates, repeat customers)
