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An Interesting (But Still Poor) Method to Ask for Permission

A few weeks ago, I received an email with what I would call a pretty weak subject—“NMFN’s Financial Strength.” Even though I was not expecting this email, I still opened it as I recognized the “from” name, John Haywood.

The email itself was pretty terrible. The only real call-to-action was the attached PDF. Attachments in a mass mailing? Red flag! Near the end of the email, in bold was the following:

“Your transmission of electronic mail to this address represents your consent to two-way communication by Internet e-mail. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer on which it exists.”

A couple of things jumped out at me. First—and not really critical—“Internet e-mail”? Huh? I’m pretty sure that since the turn of the millennium, we just refer to it as “email.” Anyway... Second, I’m not sure that I “received [the email] in error,” but I certainly never gave John permission to email me at work.

However, I thought nothing of this odd non-permission-based email and simply dumped it in my trash folder. But, nine days later, I got this:

I immediately recognized the sender—John Haywood again—which led me to open the message. However, as an email marketing account manager, I was especially intrigued by the subject line “Action Required for Subscription Confirmation - Northwestern Mutual Financial Network.” My initial reaction was that at least the subject was clear, direct, and actionable.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE EMAIL
1. “Thank you for your interest in News Brief...”: I never indicated that I was interested! This does not count as explicit consent (opt-in).
2. Two links - Confirm or Decline Subscription: I like this part. Clear and to the point.
3. “Note: This final confirmation step....”: I like that this section tells me what will happen if I “confirm” or “decline”; however, what happens if I do nothing? What if all I do is open the message? What about if I had just deleted without opening? What about if I marked it as spam? Will they count this as a confirmation? (I chose to “do nothing”—let’s see what happens next!)
4. Privacy Policy: The privacy policy does a nice job of explaining my rights, but is a bit confusing. Their definition of opt-in “requires that a person or entity request to be included on an email list.” Based on their own words, I never opted in!

TAKEAWAYS
1. Permission is easy: Ask for it. Make sure you get it (explicitly). Double check to ensure they were serious (confirmation). Welcome them.
2. Be explicit: Tell me why you are emailing me, how often you’ll be sending, what it will look like, and how I can unsubscribe.

—DJ Waldow of Bronto Software

Posted on October 10, 2008 10:38 AM | Permalink

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Jordan Ayan is the chairman of Create-It!, a technology consulting organization, as well as the CEO of SubscriberMail, one of the leading email marketing companies. A two-time book author, a patent holder and a frequent speaker, Jordan has more than 20 years of experience in direct and database marketing. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing (CMM) and an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is communications director at email service provider Lyris. He has 20 years of experience from enterprise, SMB, agency and start-up marketing, communications and innovation roles at companies including Habeas, Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Philips Electronics and two of his own start-ups. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experience Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Kevin Senne is the Strategic Deliverability Director for Premiere Global Services. Kevin has been heavily involved in all facets of email marketing for more than a decade and he previously managed Email Operations for Travelocity.com. Kevin specializes in deliverability, strategy, and social media integratio and he focuses on helping marketers become permission-based one-to-one marketers. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

Kara Trivunovic currently serves as the senior director of strategic services for StrongMail Systems, where she is responsible for helping marketers optimize their email marketing programs for greater returns. Most recently Kara was founder and principal of The Email Advisor, a respected email marketing consultancy. Prior to launching The Email Advisor, Kara led strategic services for the email division of Premiere Global Services. Kara brings a unique perspective to the space having worked on the client, agency and provider side for 10 years.

Chris Wheeleris the director of deliverability at Bronto Software. He is leading the charge for ensuring both Bronto's customers and staff are well informed about email marketing practices and technology as well as being the face of Bronto deliverability externally. Previously, Chris created the internal deliverability program at Amazon.com alongside program managing the operations of the email team and was at an ESP leading a team of deliverability consultants. Besides being a frequent contributor on Deliverability.com, Chris is a part of many email industry forums, both business and technical. Read more.

Chad White is the research director at Smith-Harmon, an email marketing strategy and creative services agency. He is the founder of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.