Brian Clotworthy thought something was fishy about the e-mails he kept getting from OptInBuilders pitching him on e-mail appending services.
For one thing, they kept arriving at an e-mail address he had created specifically for his company’s vendor listing on the Direct Marketing Association’s Web site—and used for nothing else—even after he requested they stop.
What really shocked the executive vice president at construction-trade list-management firm The Information Refinery though was when he finally answered one of the e-mails and engaged OptInBuilders, he said.
During the exchange—in which Clotworthy came up with a phony business need for a non-existent client—an OptInBuilders representative sent over a work order and data cards claiming OptInBuilders would be using construction-magazine subscriber files The Information Refinery manages exclusively, Clotworthy added.
“We guard our data very closely,” said Clotworthy. “There is no way they could have those files.”
According to Clotworthy, among many unsolicited e-mails he received pitching appending services over the past several years was one in August 2007 from someone claiming to be Greg Jones at OptInBuilders.com with the subject line “Possible alliance.”
In the message, Jones asked Clotworthy to schedule a conference call to discuss a possible e-mail appending deal.
“I was contacted over and over again by him and others at his company via e-mail. I had told them to stop countless times, verbally and through e-mail,” wrote Clotworthy in an e-mail exchange with this newsletter. “I suspected that they were not a legitimate company so I replied to find out exactly what was going on.”
According to Clotworthy, he responded with an e-mail describing a nonexistent business need for a nonexistent client.
“Your timing is impeccable,” Clotworthy wrote.
“I am in need of a MAJOR e-mail append job. Can you please quote me on appending e-mails to my client’s house file?” he continued. “Their file has close to 20 million records and they will take as many e-mails as they can get. This client needs to act fast on this job.”
Clotworthy also said his client needed 350,000 construction-company names for a postal mailing.
Jones responded with a work order claiming OptInBuilders would append 20 million records at an astounding 50% match rate for $64,500. Clotworthy supplied this newsletter a copy of the work order.
In e-mail appending—where the data vendor takes a marketer’s customer list and attempts to match e-mail addresses to the postal addresses that lack them—a 50% match rate is unheard of. In business-to-business e-mail appending, a typical match rate—or percentage of the marketer’s postal addresses for which the vendor will likely have e-mail addresses—is more like from 10% to 30%.
OptInBuilders’ contract called for half of the money to be paid up front and half upon completion of the job.
Even more astounding than the claimed match rate, according to Clotworthy, were the sources OptInBuilders’ work order claimed would be used to do the job.
“It listed four magazine names that we exclusively manage,” said Clotworthy. “Three of them we’ve managed for 15 years, one of them we brought to market probably four or five years ago.”
The list owners asked that their names be kept out of this article.
OptInBuilders’ work order and data cards listed information that appeared to have been copied directly from the Information Refinery’s Web site, said Clotworthy. It seemed Jones had no idea he was presenting an Information Refinery executive with a work order and data cards created with information lifted from The Information Refinery’s Web site, Clotworthy said.
Just to make sure OptInBuilders didn’t have the files Jones’ work order and data cards claimed they had, Clotworthy said, he asked Jones to provide some data samples.
Jones responded with 10 sample records, according to Clotworthy.
“So I instantly run to our database and not one of them is in there,” he said. Clotworthy added that when he asked Jones where he got the data, Jones said his firm had an exclusive relationship with the four magazines.
“At that point I picked up the phone and got his boss on the phone and essentially had a screaming match with him,” said Clotworthy.
Clotworthy added that he is still being contacted by OptInBuilders and other seemingly related firms. “All the e-mails are the same: ‘Possible alliance,’” said Clotworthy. “Since then [the exchange with OptInBuilders], I’ve probably received 100 e-mails from them.”
When contacted by telephone by this newsletter, OptInBuilders’ Jones said his firm never claimed to have access to the four construction-related magazines’ subscriber files.
“Let’s say, for example, we are saying we are getting permission from so-and-so magazine,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we have access to their subscriber base. What we basically mean is that we tried to know these people who are buying this magazine. The people who would be buying a construction magazine would be a construction company, or some vendors or general contractors. We just guess them and we try to know them by a telemarketing campaign and then we verify.”
When asked if he thought the magazines’ owners would have a right to be upset over unauthorized use of their logos on data cards, Jones said: “We are not doing anything illegal. If the magazine owner comes and asks, we’ll say: ‘Sir, we just guessed, nothing else.’”
However, Clotworthy supplied this newsletter with data cards he said he received from OptInBuilders. The data cards carry the magazines’ logos and claim to offer the contact information of subscribers to those magazines.
Clotworthy said he and other executives at The Information Refinery considered suing OptInBuilders, but decided the effort would probably cost more than it would be worth.
Meanwhile, there is evidence that OptInBuilders is operated by the same India-based outfit that operates EmailAppenders, an organization that has been in multiple disputes with marketers who claim it sold them garbage e-mail data.
According to anti-spam outfit Spamhaus’s ROKSO list, or Register of Known Spam Operations, an India-based company called Data Champions/Sloan Marketing operates EmailAppenders.com, EmailAppenders.net, OptInBuilders.com and OptInBuilders.biz.
They are among at least 51 domains Data Champions/Sloan Marketing operates, or has operated, according to Spamhaus.
EmailAppenders is being sued by Internet Retailer. The publisher and tradeshow operator claims EmailAppenders wrongly claimed to have its 2008 conference attendee list for sale.
At deadline, neither OptInBuilders.com nor OptInBuilders.biz would load. What does load, however, is OptInsBuilder.com with an oddly placed ‘s.’
Also, an e-mail [before he was reached by phone] to the address Jones used when communicating with Clotworthy, Gregj@optinbuilders.com, bounced. Moreover, OptInBuilders claims its postal address is 5715 Will Clayton, Humble, TX. A Google Maps search of that address brings back a photo of an empty lot.
