I subscribed to what?

Tomorrow is GDPR day. That’s the day when the new Global Data Protection Regulations take effect in the EU. I’m sure everyone reading this blog has seen dozens, if not hundreds, of blog posts, articles, webinars, and guidance docs about how to comply. I’m not going to rehash it because, other folks know this better than me.
There are a some things I’m finding fascinating watching  this whole GDPR thing.
First, the number of companies who have my addresses and I don’t know why. Take Newsweek (yes, the magazine people). They’re sending GDPR notifications to my LinkedIn address. I can’t figure out why they’re harvesting / buying addresses from LinkedIn. Then there’s SALESmango who are some company that started spamming me a few years ago and refuses to accept unsubscribe request. They’re sending me opt-in requests. Yeah, no, go away. I told you to stop, but wow, you won’t.
Another interesting piece is just how much I’ve signed up for over the last 18 – 20 years I’ve been using this set of addresses. Wow. So much mail. And, generally, I thought of myself as relatively careful in who I gave email addresses to. I don’t normally go around dropping addresses into forms but even a couple a month adds up over 20 years.
Then there are the companies violating CAN SPAM in one way or another. Sending mail to unsubscribed addresses and refusing to include an opt-out link are the two things I’ve seen regularly. Yeah, no. I think it’s safe to say that if I’ve opted out from receiving your mail, you should probably put my data away in a dark closet and not touch it again. But.. but.. but… But nothing. Go away. As for the lack of an unsubscribe link, get over yourself. You’re not that special. I don’t think that this really is something that counts for exemption.
Also, is there an official template? So many of these emails look identical. I have to give credit to whomever did it first. Because if plagiarism is the sincerest form of praise, you have an entire industry praising you.
Finally, it’s been amusing to watch the general frustration with all the GDPR mail. It seems many people are getting tired of the deluge. That’s OK, though, it should end by Saturday. Or so we can only hope.
 

OATH and Microsoft updates
#GDPR

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Social invading everything

I discovered, inadvertently, that there is a business networking site modeled after dating site. If you’re selling something you go on the site and register as a seller. If you’re buying something you go on the site and register as a buyer. Buyers can post RFIs and sellers can respond.
Decent enough business model, they’ve even fleshed it out so the site itself acts as an invoicing and billing mechanism.
That’s how I discovered it, one of our very large international telco customers decided they wanted to use this site for billing. Many large telcos expect vendors to use their proprietary site, so I wasn’t that surprised when they asked. And, given they’re international being able to bill them electronically just means I don’t have to remember to use the international stamps.
At the behest of our customer, I signed up at the website. It’s like most social networking sites, create a profile, categorize yourself, make everything public. The thing is, I don’t want to use this site to find new customers. I am just using it because one of my current customers is expecting it. Don’t get me wrong, Abacus is a great product and our customers are extremely happy with it, but it’s pretty niche. It’s not something that’s going to be searched for on a generic website.
I thought that when I set my profile to private that would be some sort of signal to keep me out of the main directory of the site. This morning I realized that wasn’t true when I got a bunch of emails telling me about all these companies looking for “business software” (the closest category I could find).
Getting a bunch of irrelevant mail was annoying enough. Even worse, there was no unsub link in the email. Eventually, I discovered an entire page of email options that were not made clear to me up front. I also sent mail to support and suggested that they talk to their lawyers to clarify whether their opt-out option was consistent with CAN SPAM. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, but I am not a lawyer.
To the company’s credit, they did have good support and my questions through support were answered in a timely fashion. One of their support reps even called me on the phone to clarify what it was that I wanted to happen and walk me through their email options. She was very upfront about yes, they opted everyone in to all the mail at the very beginning of the process. “We’re like match.com for businesses!”
I’m sure there are some businesses that will find this service to be great. But it’s not what I want or need. Despite the fact that their support was so helpful, I don’t have a great feeling about this company. It seems a bit dishonest that I thought I was signing up for a billing portal, but was actually joining “match.com for businesses. Why couldn’t they make that clear in the 7 emails in 2 days “inviting” me to sign up?
I know I’m a little more sensitive to bad mailing processes than most people, but this was quite an unpleasant experience from the multiple identical emails and reminders before I signed up to the irrelevant stuff I got afterwards.

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Where did you get my address?

Both Steve and I are trying to get answers from Amazon, Target and Epsilon about how Target acquired our Amazon specific email addresses. Target phone reps told us the mail we got was a phish, Epsilon is refusing to acknowledge Target is a customer and Amazon has promised us “they’re looking into it.”
Meanwhile, an address of mine was transferred from one customer of an ESP to another customer of the same ESP. At first I was told I must have signed up for the mail; as proof I was provided with the data I supposedly signed up. When I explained no that wasn’t true, the abuse desk told me they had discovered there was a mistake and that “These two clients use the same 3rd party ESP and they had mixed the files.” I’m not actually sure who “they” refers to, but as long as they’ve untangled the files I am not going to argue. The sad part is that it took an escalation to Return Path (the IP sending the mail is certified) to get anyone to actually respond to my report of an address given to Company A being mailed by Company B.
On the flip side, mail showed up today that actually had a link for “how was I added?”
Atari_Optout
When you click on the link it shows exactly where the address came from and when it was added to the list.
How_was_I_added_to_this_list_
It would be great if more companies provided this information to their recipients. I think it would probably decrease spam reports and make consumers feel more comfortable about how companies are collecting and using information.

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Ask Laura: What about Transactional Opt-Outs?

AskLaura_Heading3
Dear Laura,
We are having a bit of an internal struggle on our end as we launch our new quarterly account summaries. What are your views on including an unsubscribe link in these emails?
My personal opinion is that we should. Although the summaries can be classified as “transactional”, they are not tied to a specific recent transaction a customer made and can be viewed as a general reminder to shop again. As I gathered data to present my case, I reviewed several different account summaries and I found it split close to 50/50. Do you have any data or thoughts to support one way or another?
Thanks,
Summary Judgement

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