The Association for Interactive Media, a subsidiary of the Direct Marketing Association, has published a set of best-practice guidelines for the practice known as email appending. Online privacy advocates are wary of the practice, as it can result in users' being added to email marketing databases without their permission.
AIM defines email address appending as "the process of adding an individual's email address to that individual's record inside a marketer's existing database. This is accomplished by matching the marketer's database against a third-party, permission-based database to produce a corresponding email address." AIM considers appending acceptable "if the recipient is a customer of the marketer or has another previous business relationship with the marketer."
The organization's recommendations emphasize the use of permission-based data sources and suppression files in the appending process. In addition, the best-practices document strongly cautions marketers about adhering to state laws regarding unsolicited commercial email.
The AIM guidelines are available in PDF format at:
http://www.interactivemarketing.org/BPappend.php
Views: We're All Going to Be Getting More Email
So what else is new? Email appending is one of the trends that will result in an increase in commercial email for users over the next few years. I also expect that this is one of the practices that is going to remain legal and is going to become widely used in the business world. Largely, consumers are not going to object when they start receiving email from companies they already do business with.
I do think we are going to start seeing different "flavors" of email appending. The more that this practice respects consumer choice and the more it's based on permission marketing, the better it's going to taste.
What do you think about email appending? Use the "Send a Letter" feature at the top of the right-hand column on this page to put in your two cents!
-- Al Bredenberg
Publisher, EmailResults.com (http://www.emailresults.com)
