NetCreations Manages Single-Opt-in Lists

Dean of the double opt in Rosalind Resnick is expanding her repertoire to single opt in.

Resnick, CEO of NetCreations Inc., New York, is now taking on management of single-opt-in business-to-business and technology e-mail house files.

Resnick, a long-standing and outspoken advocate of the double-opt-in method of building e-mail lists, is continuing to add to her company’s 32-million-name database using the double opt-in method.

But the marketplace has evolved to the point where a single-opt method is okay in the b-to-b space, she said.

There is a scarcity of reliable, permission-based b-to-b lists, Resnick said. “[The single opt-in method] is something we debated internally, but something that companies are demanding,” Resnick said.

“We’ve always considered as acceptable the mailer who wants to mail to his own house file,” she said. “A mailer has a right to mail to his own list and send relevant offers and information as long as the consumer has voluntarily opted in.”

With the new service, NetCreations manages companies’ e-mail house files, making them available for rental by other companies. A marketer can request a specific list by name.

The customers in that house file may not have double-opted-in to receive e-mail offers from other marketers. They may have checked a box once agreeing to receive third-party offers, but not necessarily been sent a confirmation e-mail that they responded to.

Entrepreneur.com, with about 50,000 e-mail addresses, is the first list to be managed by NetCreations.

The service is available to companies in NetCreations’ network.

Resnick added that NetCreations would “scrutinize” list owners’ privacy policies before taking on management of e-mail lists.

“We need to change as the market changes, but consumer privacy is still Job 1 around here, Resnick said.

In other company news, NetCreations is poised to introduce a compiled database product that would include consumers’ e-mail and postal addresses. E-mail addresses on this file are double opt in.

The postal and e-mail addresses will be overlaid with socio-demographic data, using the expertise of NetCreations’ sister company Consodata.

Resnick expects the database to contain 6 million names when it is introduced in September.

London-based database company Consodata and NetCreations are subsidiaries of Italian yellow pages compiler, SEAT Pagine Gialle. SEAT acquired NetCreations on Feb. 15.