The Association for Interactive Marketing is releasing its best practices for e-mail append on Tuesday at the net.marketing conference in New York. A copy of the latest version of the document, which DIRECT Newsline obtained, deals with marketer/customer relationships, opt in and wording of requests.
What had started out as guidelines that AIM members would be required to follow has been downgraded to best practice recommendations.
"We weren't ready to issue guidelines at such an early stage," said Ben Isaacson, executive director of AIM, which is an independent subsidiary of the Direct Marketing Association. "Even in the six months the CRE (AIM's Council for Responsible E-mail) has been working on the document, e-mail append has just begun developing."
The definition of e-mail append, according to the document: "is the process of adding an individual’s e-mail 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 e-mail address."
The first recommendation says it is acceptable to use e-mail append if the recipient is a customer of the marketer "or has another previous business relationship with the marketer." A customer is defined as someone who has purchased from, donated to, or signed up for a marketer's subscription service. A previous business relationship may be defined by previous correspondence, requests for information, responses to questionnaires or contests, or a proven offline contact.
Before adding someone to the marketer's database, the document recommends sending an e-mail asking them if they agree to be contacted by e-mail.
"It is a broad definition of customer," admitted Isaacson. "We try to make sure that it is open enough for people to do it, but closed enough so that companies with questionable privacy practices can't use it."
The second recommendation calls for data sources used in the matching process to be permission-based. This is explained as data sources "provide notice and choice regarding the acceptance of receiving third-party offers." All appropriate suppression files should be applied to the file during the match.
No. 3 covers the first e-mail message a marketer would send to a matched e-mail address. That e-mail should clearly express the intent of the e-mail and offer the recipient a choice regarding whether they wish to receive future e-mails from the marketer. The wording of the message should vary based on whether the recipient is a customer or has some prior business relationship with the customer.
Marketers should consider the frequency of requests. "If the marketer does not get a positive response "within a reasonable period, then the marketer may want to consider adding the customer to a suppression list," said the document.
The fourth recommendation deals with data ownership. The time frame in which an e-mail address becomes a marketer's property, and when the relationship with the e-mail append service and ends, can be part of a contract, according to the document.
When the recipient is a customer, the e-mail address may be appended to the marketer's file after the first request message as long as the recipient did not opt out. When the recipient has another previous business relationship "and the data source is affirmative consent," the address data may be appended to the marketer's file after the first request message as long as the recipient did not opt out.
Recipients should be offered a chance to opt out at any time and, if they do, they should be placed on suppression lists.
The fifth recommendation has to do with security, suggesting that the marketer take steps to prevent the accidental or unauthorized use or release of the appended data. Third-party vendors should hold the marketer's customer files in strict confidence and not use the data for any other purpose than as directed by the marketer.
The final recommendation says the marketer and append service share responsibility for responding to communications from the recipient after the append process starts. After an e-mail append is processed, the marketer is responsible for opt-out requests and other customer-service inquiries.
The document draws on the DMA's Online Commercial Solicitation Guidelines and AIM's Six Resolutions for Responsible E-mail.
Will there be guidelines in the future? AIM members are required to follow in the future? "We are still going to gather insight and as the industry evolves, we will take all that into consideration," Isaacson said.
