Loose Cannon: Societal Values, Meet Market Values

What’s in a name? Well, a name can mean a lot of headache, if it’s a child’s name and it accidentally receives an e-mail touting products for grown-ups. Especially if Unspam gets its way.

Unspam, an e-mail registry firm, has been lobbying individual states to create child-protection e-mail files, as Direct Newsline editor-at-large Ken Magill has reported in a series of articles.

Once states create these registries, Unspam would assumedly win the rights to maintain them. With each state charging between five and seven dollars per thousand e-mail addresses checked, and marketers having to run their prospects through all existing state registries, e-mail marketing would become prohibitively expensive.

Such registries are also unnecessary. There is enough money in legitimate sales of products aimed at grown-ups that legitimate DMers don’t need to go to the underage market. The existing fines or jail sentences for marketers who actually sell this merchandise to children — as opposed to accidentally pitching it to them — make the underage market risk-heavy and profit-light.

Additionally, grownup-oriented products often carry grownup-oriented price tags. More than half a decade ago I covered a trade show of adult-related merchandise (There are few experiences that can make erotica less erotic than a large number of sweaty consumers jammed onto an exhibit hall floor.)

At the conference, I spoke with the head of an outfit that markets videos of a particular enthusiast nature about the incentives he uses to move his product. It was a short conversation.

“We don’t need any incentives,” he said.

What? No discounts, loyalty programs or clever advertising? As he put it (somewhat less delicately than I am) all his customers needed was a never-ending supply of fresh material. Or, at a minimum, of material from the last 30 years that isn’t too obviously dated.

This is not the attitude of an industry hurting for customers. And given the premium price these videotapes command, the number of kids snapping up these products is likely to be limited.

Don’t take my word for it: The mantra of direct marketing is “test, test, test.” So let’s test. I invite Unspam to assemble a list of children’s e-mail addresses — say, a list of 100,000 six-year-olds.

Pit that file against a list of adults of Unspam’s choosing. For fairness’s sake it should be a cross-section of the U.S., but if Unspam wants to lard it up with folks seemingly unresponsive to prurient offers, such as medical technicians involved with STD clinics, regular viewers of weekend religious television programs, or the Harper Valley P.T.A. membership rolls, so be it.

Send both lists identical offers. Not only will the list of adults outperform Unspam’s list of children, but the kiddy list will actually lose money, especially as the few children who do respond are likely to generate a lot of charge-offs. (A word of caution for marketers: If you solicit a six-year-old for stogies and stag movies, get the MasterCard number up front.)

At this point, marketers are thinking, “Levey, you’ve missed the point. The idea is that we can’t let any salacious material into the hands of innocents.” No, I have not missed the point. Basic economics dictates that there is no financial incentive for marketers to target this audience. This is doubly true in light of current laws that punish the sale of inappropriate goods to minors.

Many responsible prurient-product marketers use an opt-in marketing model before sending out their offerings. And irresponsible prurient-product marketers are going to ignore Unspam-sponsored files anyway. Here’s a piece of legislation I could support: All prospecting adult-oriented e-mail should be text-only, and should describe little, but rather offer appropriate-age adults a chance to sign up for a mailing list.

That said, the onus on marketers to verify the age of their customers already exists. A system that amounts to preemptive redress is not appropriate.

Unspam knows that salacious mailings are the most vulnerable point in e-mail marketing’s spectrum. But if the industry allows this segment to be pilloried, other types of marketers will surely be caught up in Unspam’s net.

The long and short is that there isn’t a lot of money for these types of marketers to make off lists of children. But Unspam certainly stands to make a lot of money off e-mail marketers. Who’s exploiting whom?

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