Jigsaw—a company that built its business by having members upload and clean others’ contact information in its marketing database—put out a press release last week touting its new “Email Learning Center,” a repository of Can-Spam-compliance and e-mail-best-practices white papers and Webinars, among other things.
Included in the release announcing the learning center was the following eye-popping sentence: “Email prospecting to non-opt-in emails generates many opportunities.”
Prospecting to non-opt-in e-mails generates many opportunities? Uh, yeah, I thought as I read the release.
Prospecting to non-opt-in e-mails generates many opportunities to get your servers blocked by ISPs that have determined you’re a spammer.
I called Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler and asked him to explain his company’s spam policy and how it fits within industry best practices.
The following is an edited transcript of the interview:
Magilla Marketing: As I was looking for things to cover last week, I ran across your release and one line jumped out at me and that was: There are opportunities in opt-out prospecting e-mail. And that just struck me as antithetical to what the industry has been preaching for the last 10 years. Isn’t it?
Jim Fowler: I don’t think it said “opportunities in opt out.” I think it said “opportunities in non-opt-in.” There are two very different concepts there. It’s possible we may disagree, but I want to make sure we disagree on the same set of facts.
Magilla: OK. Also, I think I should clarify something. I don’t moralize on the concept of spam. In fact, I used to be a direct marketer. I think like a direct marketer. I defend marketers. I was also the guy who argued against double opt in as unnecessary, though I have since change my stand on that topic.
But then along came the “report spam” button, and to me that was a game changer. I don’t tell people: “Don’t spam because you’re evil if you do it.” I tell them: “Don’t spam because you’re going to get reported and if you get enough of those reports [spam complaints] you’re going to get your mail blocked and be unable to reach even the people who want to hear from you.”
So understand, this is not a moral argument I’m making. It’s a practical argument. And it looks to me like your service is a prime opportunity to get people hitting the “report spam” button.
Fowler: Let’s back up. The first answer is “no.” But let’s back up so we can be really clear. When I looked at your question [I submitted a few to his PR rep before this interview so he could prepare] I was a little bit confused. Both I and my COO came from Digital Impact. We came from the e-mail marketing game and Can Spam is really clear in that you don’t have to be opt-in in order to send someone e-mails. There are three very clear rules about sending e-mail and they are: they have to know who it’s from, you can’t misrepresent what it is your selling and you have to give them a way to opt out.
When someone uses Jigsaw, they have to comply with all federal, state, international—any sort of law that may apply. The analogy I would use is people do bad things on eBay, which is a platform. And unfortunately, I would suggest there are people who do bad things on Jigsaw in violation of the law. Anytime we find someone doing that, we immediately block them and do everything appropriate to stop them.
Magilla: I never had any doubt that you were completely within the law. [But] complying with the law is not going to get your mail delivered. Complying with the law is not going to stop Yahoo or AOL from blocking your mail because you’ve been identified as a spammer. You can be within the law and be a spammer and if the ISPs identify you as a spammer they’re going to block you.
Fowler: One of the things that we’ve learned is that everyone has their own definition of spam. When we were at Digital Impact, I believe we had 22 active definitions of spam.
Magilla: Well I’ve got one. It’s unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail. That’s the definition. Everyone who has a definition different than that is wrong.
Fowler: Right. I think we get into the legal versus moral here.
Magilla: I said at the outset, it’s not a moral argument. It’s a practical argument. I’m not telling you you’re bad. I’m telling you the ISPs have these certain metrics they use to determine whether or not to accept incoming mail and if you trip those metrics, you’re going to get blocked.
Fowler: We agree. But Jigsaw doesn’t deliver the mail.
Magilla: I know that, but you supply the addresses that are going to get me blocked.
Fowler: I’m not arguing that. If someone comes into Jigsaw and gets data and does stupid things, they will get what they deserve. We agree completely on that. One thing you may not be aware of is that there is no non-business information on Jigsaw of any kind, including any AOL, Hotmail or Gmail addresses. It has to be an address associated with a Web site that does business on the Internet.
Now, there are a lot of Fortune 1,000 companies that have e-mail systems that operate very much like a mini Google or Yahoo. So the same problems exist. But my point is we agree. That’s why we put the learning center out there. We’re saying: “Guys, here’s the law. You have to conform to the law. And here are best practices. Because if you do stupid things, you’re going to get blocked so you need to do this thing right. So we absolutely agree.
Magilla: Well, no we don’t. If you mail to people who haven’t given permission, you’re spamming. By definition, me going into Jigsaw, downloading a list and e-mailing people is not a best practice.
Fowler: I’m not arguing with that point either. With Jigsaw, we do one-to-one. Our sales guys will go out and mail individuals. All I’m saying is whether it’s best practice or not, it is legal to do.
Magilla: It’s legal for me to … I don’t know … spit on my cat. But just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s wise.
Also, I have no beef with one-to-one e-mails, but you’ve got guys on your site … I saw one who had uploaded 23,000 names. Now you can’t tell me he’s got 23,000 contacts. He’s scraping that stuff.
Now you said you’ve got a definition for “non-opt-in.” Let’s talk about that for a minute.
Fowler: OK, now I’m going to leave the law because every company has to comply with the law. Now you’re adamant that it is bad business practices to send bulk, unsolicited commercial e-mail. There are lots of people who agree with that.
Now let’s look at what we really tout about Jigsaw from a marketing perspective. One of the reasons I think we’ve been so successful is every one of our records is complete. It has name, title, and the three most-important fields to any salesperson, phone number, e-mail address and postal address.
The one point that I’ll make is we don’t have these issues on phone or direct mail. It’s become part of our consciousness as business people that we’re going to get cold called and we’re going to get direct mail. For whatever reason, the public has a tendency to react to very strongly to the e-mail side of it.
My personal prediction is that the furor over e-mail marketing as a direct channel to get to someone is going to tone down over time. My personal belief is that if someone’s going to bother me, the one I don’t want is a phone call. If some gets me on the phone, that’s the one that takes the most of my time. As for direct mail, I’m a green guy. I live in Northern California. I cannot not recycle. It takes me more time to recycle direct mail and [what is more] a tree just died.
With phone and direct mail, there is no opt-in comcept.
Magilla: And there’s a reason for that. With phone and direct mail there are natural economic governors in place. It costs a lot of money to put together and send a direct mail piece. It costs a lot of money to hire a telerep and have them bang on those phone numbers. E-mail, on the other hand, costs nothing to send. This is an argument that’s been made for more than 10 years. When you send e-mail you’re transferring costs to others. Someone has to process that mail. In e-mail we don’t have the economic governors that force us to be responsible, or somewhat responsible, that we have in these other channels.
Fowler: I disagree that there’s not a governor. There is a governor in that you’re losing the ability to market to someone, and for any legitimate business that’s a huge cost. And the technology [to fight spam I presume; I unfortunately, cut him off] just keeps getting better and better.
Magilla: But that’s my whole point. Unless you’ve got some magic formula I don’t know about, if I pull 50,000 names off of Jigsaw, and e-mail them, I am risking not being able to talk to many people who even want to hear from me because I’m going to get marked as a spammer. Is that not a risk?
Fowler: I think that it is absolutely a risk and that’s why in e-mail best practices we’re very clear when you read it that people should be cautious. Jigsaw’s really about open source. Our company data is downloadable for free. We do privacy practices that the rest of the data industry doesn’t even dream about. First of all if you want to find out if you’re on Jigsaw, you can do it in two seconds. Try and do that on any other data company. We let people get removed automatically and electronically now. And we let them provide references and instructions on how they want to be contacted. We really try to say look: “Openness and transparency are key.”
What do we do when we have a customer who takes 50,000 names and uses that information to contact people one by one? And then we’ve got another customer and even though we’ve told them, “Go to our e-mail learning center and learn how to do this right,” and they don’t.
Magilla: But by taking names from the Jigsaw database and e-mailing them, isn’t that by definition not an industry best practice?
Fowler: So you’re saying I’m a sales guy and I get one name off of Jigsaw…
Magilla: I’ve got no problem with that. If you’re a sales guy and take one name… I’ve got no problem with one-to-one sales pitches.
Fowler: But that’s what I’m getting at. And that’s what the e-mail learning center is all about. It’s saying: “Guys, if you’re going to do this, you’ve got to do it right.”
Magilla: OK, we can get into: “So we take one [e-mail address]” And, yeah, I’m comfortable with that. Then we take two. I’ve found the e-mail addresses of two potential buyers of my widgets, and I’m cool with that, too. Well, when does it become bulk? I don’t know. Maybe it’s 100 and then it becomes bulk. But people aren’t going into the Jigsaw database and pulling one name, are they?
Fowler: Sure they are. They do it all the time, especially in this economy. Job seekers come in and pull one name and send their resume to the person who does the actual hiring rather than sending their resume to jobs@xyz.com. Sales guys do it all day long.
Magilla: What percentage of people who pull data from Jigsaw do so on a one-to-one basis?
Fowler: We have just shy of a million members right now.
Magilla: Well, I’m a member and I never signed up.
Fowler: No, no, no. That’s one of the things that’s a little confusing about our business model. A registered member is someone who joins the service and has the ability to add, update and graveyard records. If you want a business-card record from Jigsaw, the way you get a credit to do that is you add, update or graveyard a record. We have now 15.5 million contact records on Jigsaw. You’re one of those.
We have a million members and the huge majority of those are people who will come in and dabble in onesies and twosies. There is no doubt there are members out there doing very, very large amounts of data. You can look at our leader boards and see it.
Event marketers are very active. And recruiters are some of our most active members.
And if I can digress for just a moment, I believe the social impact of this is that if it makes information transparent … it makes business-card information very easy to get to find people compared to the old days. Recruiters use Jigsaw when they’re looking for passive candidates, folks that are employed but who aren’t necessarily looking for a job. Instead of people getting one job offer in a given period of time, they’re getting 10 because people are finding their resume on LinkedIn and finding their contact information on Jigsaw.
What this does is transfer power from the employer to the employee. Perfect information makes perfect markets. There is good and there is bad when information becomes more transparent. We’re not saying there is nothing bad when information becomes more transparent. There are people out there who are going to do stupid things. And I think that’s just where the market goes, People do stupid things with cold calling; they do stupid things with direct mail. It’s not like e-mail’s any different. It’s just a younger sport. There are going to be good marketers and there are going to be bad marketers. We try and promote the good.
Magilla: The fundamental issue here is that the Jigsaw model invites and encourages marketers to take risks that I would guess a lot of my readers would say marketers should not take. I guess that’s the best way I can put it.
Fowler: Let’s start where we agree. We both agree that if you go and send to 50,000 records then you’re an idiot and you’re going to get blocked. We also agree that if you’re a sale guy and you send one e-mail out to one person, then that’s cool. But there is a middle ground where there are a few dozen. And sales and marketing must happen.
