Domain Availability
Changes In The Law
Moving forward with contact strategies
Business to corporate subscriber remains an opt-out exercise, business to individual subscriber requires more thought. For example, if you want to contact people on an existing (business-to-individual) database, but the list is not as clean as one might have hoped for.
Guidance from the information Commissioner states:
As an exercise of our discretion, we have allowed organisations to continue using lists that were not obtained on an opt-in basis but only where
- They complied with existing legislation when they collected your details (as a minimum, they told you they would market you)
- They have contacted you recently (e.g. in the last 12 months)
- You haven’t already told them to stop marketing you, AND
- They give you a chance to opt-out (free of charge) with every marketing message they send you.
Any new electronic mail contact details that are obtained from an individual subscriber must be done so in accordance with the new stricter regime, where individuals actively and knowingly ‘sign up’ to receive future direct marketing via electronic channels. To achieve this, organisations must review their data capture methodologies and business processes to ensure that electronic contact data obtained from the 11th of December 2003 is done so on a consensual basis. Failing to do this could result in your customer contact database having an uncomfortable resemblance to a very large pale pachyderm.