I know you have questions - I see them all the time, and try to bring a voice of reason and reality when I notice the threads.
So, here’s your chance to ask. I’ve worked in the Direct Marketing industry for 10 years, in various capacities. I’ve been a marketer: working with ad agencies to design and send direct mail, infomercials, radio ads, and print ads. I’ve supervised an inbound call center. I currently work as an internal Direct Marketing consultant as part of an IT group, providing general knowlege of direct marketing practices for both outbound and inbound call centers, and translating those into technical requirements.
Surreal, IANATelemarketer but I believe that’s because the telephone numbers are dialed by a computer, and the human telemarketer only gets connected after the computer realizes that the phone has been picked up.
The telezappers DO work with some of the telemarketers. You can do the same thing by downloading the ring tones off the internet…save them to your answering machine.
There was a story a few months back about how a company had come out with a device to defeat the zapper…of course urging that it not be used to dial folks who don’t want to be dialed. :dubious:
Anywho…for Morgainelf, have you (or your company) ever spammed as part of a Direct Marketing campaign? (By spam, I mean sending unsolicited email…or flooding newsgroups with advertisements)
FWIW, the ringtone I mentioned can be found here (among other places)
Also, X~Slayer(ALE)
Request to be put on their “Do Not Call list”. According to the federal Telecommunications Consumer Protection Act…they are SUPPOSED to honor that request. Repeated offenses can be cause for legal remedy. Info here.
Various states have also enacted “do not call lists” for their states. Whether the telemarketers will heed them…is up for debate…
Yep, racinchikki is right. Those are called predictive dialers. Basically, the software hooks up to the phone system software, and determines how soon the next available telemarketer will be available. Then, it automatically dials the next customer on the list, and sends the call to the available telemarketer. The software isn’t as good as it should be, and the delay is caused by a miscalculation about how soon the telemarketer will be available.
Telezappers do work if the telemarketer has a predictive dialer. Those without predictive dialers won’t be impacted. FWIW, my company doesn’t use predictive dialers because we think they’re obnoxious.
beagledave, the web division of my company does send e-mail campaigns. We don’t flood newsgroups, however we do rent e-mail lists and send e-mails targeted to people whose demographics fit our customer profile. We also send a monthly newsletter to customers who register on our website. We always announce who we are in the “from” part of the e-mail, and never use anything like randomizers to hide who’s sending the e-mail.
I’d rather not announce where I work in this thread, but a little searching of previous posts will turn it up if you’re interested. I work at a high-end company that does alot of very visible direct marketing.
So if I were to get an unsolicited email from you, I could look at the headers and see unspoofed headers? I could see exactly where the spam originated from? Are you saying that sending out thousands/millions of spam does NOT violate the AUP of your ISP? :dubious:
Who do you rent youe mail lists from? And how does one “rent” an email address anyway? Who has the authority to rent such an address? “Renting” implies temporary usage of something (a car, a rug cleaner, a VHS tape) that is then RETURNED to its rightful owner. How exactly is such a list returned to its rightful owner?
You say that you send out “targetted” emails . I notice that you did NOT say that the recepients opted IN to receive them. Am I correct that the email recepients were not given an opportunity to OPT IN to the spam, but must instead OPT OUT of every email campaign (that your company “thinks” will fit their “demographic”?)
Yep. And sorry, I don’t understand your question about the AUP of our ISP. I’m not in the web/e-mail division, sorry, it’s not an area I have alot of knowledge about.
I can tell you how mailing list rental works - I can only assume it’s similar for e-mail lists.
Lists can be rented from thousands of sources. Most places that capture your name and address turn around and rent that name and address, unless they specifically tell you they don’t. (And even then they sometimes do.) Renting a list means that you pay for a one-time rental of the name. As the renter you are not allowed to (1) use it more times than you’ve contracted for, and (2) add it to your internal database. Unless the name you rented becomes your customer by purchasing something from you, in which case you then “own” that name.
Good question. I do know that we only rent e-mail lists that are “opted-in”. E-mail is different than other mail sources, because it is “opt-in” rather than “opt-out.” In other words, a consumer must say “Yes, it’s OK to e-mail me.” Opt-out means that the consumer didn’t specifically say NOT to use the name.
I’m not sure, but I think this is a result of the fine print you’ll see if you subscribe to various magazines or somehow make your name and address known to a commercial enterprise. The fine print reads something like, “From time to time, we make our subscriber list available to qualified advertisers who have products or services that may interest you. If you would prefer not to hear from these advertisers…” Then it goes on to describe the hoops you have to jump through to make sure you don’t get on any mailing lists that are rented or sold to advertisers.
I jump through the hoops; with all due respect, Morgainelf, I don’t want to hear from you when you’re trying to sell me something. (Although a friendly discussion on a message board like this is fine.) For this reason, I don’t give out my e-mail address when subscribing to a magazine; they’re going to deliver it by snail mail anyway, so I don’t see a need for them to have my e-mail address. And, as I said, I do what’s needed when filling out the form in a not-always-successful effort to keep my snail mailbox free of unsolicited advertisements and other junk mail.
I doubt it. Unfortunately there are many, many unscrupulous direct marketers that ignore the opt-in rule. I also know of companies that have inconveniently “mis-interpreted” their opt-in/opt-out flags.
By the way, since getting off of mailing lists was mentioned, currently the best way to do that is to register through www.the-dma.org. Their mail and phone opt-out lists work very well. In July the national Do Not Call registry will begin accepting names, which will also help with unsolicited phone calls. I don’t have the website for that yet, though I believe it will be released in a few weeks.
These days I get a lot of recorded calls (which I think used to be illegal, and now that they aren’t any more, we get tons). If I pick up, I get one recording. But if I’m not home, the answering machine gets one that says something like “Sorry we couldn’t catch you at home. I’ve been wanting to tell you about our great sweepstakes…”
What is the deal with this? Have you guys got software that can tell the difference between a live person and a machine pick-up, and how does it work? Most importantly, how can I tell a recording to put me on a do-not-call list??? (We get the same recordings every couple of weeks.)
Recorded calls are not illegal, as long as they leave the name of the company and their phone number. I’m not sure how they would give you the option to opt-out of the phone calls if they get you live with a recorded message - they may have an IVR (press 2 to opt-out), but maybe not. I’m sure it depends on the company. I have a pretty low opinion of companies that would employ this type of sales technique, and doubt that they are in a hurry to comply with the Telemarketing Sales Rule anyway.
Umm do you see your problem here? You claim in the second part of your message that ALL of your mailing is OPT IN mailing (hence not unsolicited…hence not spam) Yet you admit in the first part of your message that you RENT mailing lists which are composed of
In other words, you are using/renting someone’s e-mail addy without them knowing or giving permission for. Thats what the word CAPTURE (the one that YOU used) means…get it?
Let me see if I got this right. You CLAIM to only do OPT IN email marketing. In truth, you use email LISTS which are composed of CAPTURED email addys…which means that if I’m “lucky” enough to have my email addy captured by one of your spammer-for-hires, I can count on getting a nice slice of spam from your company? In other words, your company is a spammer.
Not only that, since NO domestic ISP (internet Service Provider) will survive very long with an AUP (acceptable use policy) that tolerates spamming from them…your company sends their spam the same way EVERY spammer sends their spam…they relay rape and steal bandwidth from unsecured overseas servers.
Sorry, you opened up this whole can of worms yourself. You admit that your company sends out UCE (unsolicited commercial email). You later CLAIM it’s all OPT IN, but you admit that your company RENTS lists…which have been put together by CAPTURING email addys …ergo the email addy owners are sure as hell NOT opting in.
Unless there is some crucial detail you left out, it’s fairly clear that your company spams…pure and simple. They may well be in violation of several state laws depending on how they do it. They almost assuredly are stealing resources to do so.
beagledave, calm down. He already said he didn’t know the ins and outs of the web-part of his company. Maybe this is one “Ask the telemarketer” thread that can stay civil?
Except that Morgainelf pointed out the his/her company did their email marketing in an ethical manner. That his/her company did not do OPT OUT marketing.
You’ll notice that I’ve said nothing about the poster, but rather the company that she/he works for. (And my comments are based on responses to my question about whether the company did UCE) In case it’s unclear, when I use the word “You” in my previous response…I’m referring to that part of the company that apparently does the spamming.
If ALL of the email that Morgainelf’s company sends out goes to confirmed OPT IN email addresses…then they are not spamming. If their marketing mail goes to lists of email addys that were “captured” (via bots etc)…then that is NOT opt in, but spamming.
Morgainelf, I hope you won’t mind my chiming in here.
I, too, am a direct marketer. I have handled campaigns in the tens of millions of mailed pieces as well as email campaigns and run telemarketing departments. Hell, Satan (in the form of Fenris) once offered me a job because of my qualifications.
Lists can be rented and it’s perfectly legal and above board. When someone ‘opt’s-in’ as the phrase goes, the fine print almost always includes something along the lines of ‘please check here if you’d like to receive email offers from ourselves or our partners’. Well, by jingo, anyone who rents that list is a ‘partner’. All perfectly legal.
And ‘captured’ in DM terms is a technical term that refers to email gathered from forms and the like. The phrase for what you’re outlining ‘bots’ and the like is ‘stripped’ and I could rent those by the millions tonight and send something out by morning.
Thanks for chiming in JC - I was off taking care of the Little Elf.
beagledave, I really don’t know the ins and outs of our web/e-mail business. Basically Jonathan Chance covered it - we rent “opt-in” lists. That doesn’t mean that you’ve opted in to our mailings in particular, just opted in to be e-mailed by a partner, hence someone who rents the list. As for ISPs and bandwidth, etc., I haven’t a clue. However I don’t think we have a traditional ISP - we’re a billion dollar a year multinational corporation with nothing to gain by using the tactics you outlined. But as I said, I don’t actually know.
And actually, my company is fairly new to e-mail marketing. We don’t do mass e-mails - so far they have been very targeted. I’m sure that as we get more into that medium that they’ll become larger.
beagledave, just to be clear all of our direct marketing is not opt-in. We do many direct mailings through snail-mail, and there is no need for a customer to opt-in to those mailings. The lists are all scrubbed through the DMA’s Do Not Mail list and our internal Do Not Mail list.
And hey, I wouldn’t have started the thread if I didn’t think I could take it. I understand the perception of the direct marketing industry. I take comfort knowing that the company I work for (or at least the direct marketing division) does market ethically, and that a large part of my job is to ensure that it continues in that vein. By the way, I’m female.
