DON’T GET PERSONAL
I just received yet another one of those phone calls verifying my mailing information and asking me a personal identifier to close the call.
Direct marketers, if you haven’t been hearing it enough yet, let me make the stance perfectly clear: You don’t need personal information from me and I am not giving it to you.
No mother’s maiden name. No childhood pet and no eye color. No state I was born in. Nothing.
Take me off your comp mailing list if you need to and lose the opportunity to put your thinly veiled advertorials and industry-promoting materials in front of me. I really don’t care.
This is 2004, and we are all smarter about the information we distribute. My credit card information is regularly compromised from hackers who get into the databases of places like BJs where I made a purchase six months ago, and now that card is shut down. What makes you think I believe my information is safe with you, even if you needed it (which you clearly do not)?
The first call I tried to explain why I was against it. The third call gets my aggregate wrath at the industry. It’s time to clean up your act. Make the changes before the law requires (or outlaws) it.
I do direct marketing and I know you don’t need this info. It just makes us all look bad.
Gary Zenker
Vice President, Marketing
First Financial Bank
Downingtown, PA
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