Do you have child subscribers?

Al has a short, but informative, post up on Spam Resource about privacy groups filing complaints with the FTC about companies violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Companies who are alleged to have violated COPPA include Nickelodeon, McDonalds and General Mills.
The underlying issue appears to be the presence of “send to a friend” links maintained on kid focused websites. The consumer advocates are alleging that kids don’t understand that when they send things to their friends what they’re sending is actually advertising.
I talk a lot about informed consent, but don’t often touch the idea of consent from minors. But this is a good reminder that there are other laws than CAN SPAM involved when dealing with children.

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Permission.

The discussion of “permission” and “opt-in” is one that keeps popping up again and again. I am working on posting some more thoughts about permission and consent. While I’m still thinking about what new I can say, here is a list of articles Word to the Wise I’ve posted in the past on permission:

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MAAWG statement on email appending

MAAWG has published their position statement on email appending. It’s pretty explicit in it’s condemnation of the practice.

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Relevance or Permission

One of the discussions that surrounds email marketing is whether relevance trumps permission or permission trumps relevance. I believe this entire discussion is built on a false dichotomy.
Sending relevant email is important. Not only do recipients expect mail to be relevant, but the ISPs often make delivery decisions on how relevant their users find your mail. Marketers that send too much irrelevant mail find themselves struggling to get inbox placement.
Permission makes sending relevant mail all that much easier. Sure, really good marketers can probably collect, purchase, beg, borrow and steal enough information to know that their unsolicited email is relevant. But how many marketers are actually that good?
My experience suggest that most marketers aren’t that good. They don’t segment their permission based lists to send relevant mail. They’re certainly not going to segment their non-permission based lists to send relevant mail.
Macy’s, for instance, decided that I would find their Bloomingdales mail relevant. I didn’t, and unsubscribed from both publications, after registering a complaint with their ESP. Had Macy’s asked about sending me Bloomies mail I wouldn’t have opted-in, but I probably wouldn’t have unsubbed from Macy’s mail, too.
So what’s your stand? Does relevance trump permission? Or does permission trump relevance? How much relevant, unsolicited mail do you get? How much irrelevant permission based mail do you get? And what drives you to unsubscribe from a permission based list?

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