On the news last night was a story about the guy who put bogus information into his account submission to Columbia House and then actually received a communication using that information. Now he's raising a stink (threatening a lawsuit). Apparently a collection agency purchased the account records to pursue unpaid accounts and the last name on the form was Sh**face. So his letter was addressed to Mr. Sh**face.
Of course he's saying he never opened an account under that name, and I don't know that I believe him, but let's get to the point of the post.
When you collect marketing data and reuse it for something it's not intended for, you could be in for a surprise. Regardless of the situation with the guy on the news, there are reasons that people use emails that mask their identity and are pretty untraceable from a marketing perspective.
This is one reason why your download forms may not be providing a good source of leads. People want what's at the end of the form—white paper, research report, etc—but they don't want to be put on some mailing list that's going to spam them.
People don't trust other people these days. According to Stephen M.R. Covey in his new book, The Speed of Trust, "only 34% of Americans believe that other people can be trusted." My bet is that it's even lower for companies. Which is a sad state of affairs, if you think about it.
It's also one of the reasons why Seth Godin is pushing permission marketing and David Meerman Scott is promoting giving away your content. Making information freely available can do a lot for building your reputation and proving your intent is truly in your audience's best interest. If more companies do this, maybe we can get that trust level to rise.
However, there are many companies out there who will continue to collect information in exchange for other information those people want. If you're one of them, here are a few things to pay attention to:
- Make sure people know what you'll do with the information they submit.
- Keep your promises. If you collect their information in exchange for a white paper without opt in for other communications, then don't use it for anything else without asking first.
- Have your system scan for bad words in the form fields and remove those records from the lead database - or keep them from being created in the first place.
- Have your list cleaned on a regular basis. De-dupe and remove bad records as they're discovered.
Chances are, you're not going to end up in the S***face situation, but why expose your company to the possiblity? On top of that, you've got a golden opportunity to build your reputation via exposing your expertise through thought leadership and your content strategy, so why wouldn't you? Permission-based marketing is a much stronger foundation for building active and engaging relationships than "assumed" permission. You do know what "assume" stands for, right?
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