Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Email Marketing For Local Workshop

Posted by Anonymous on 2/8/2007 at 9:52 AM ET 250 Points
Our firm is offering a workshop, presented by a local physician, on skin care. The workshop includes a medically supervised all-natural facial. Nothing will be sold or marketed at the workshop.

Is it ethical to email a flyer to a list of local female professionals, who may be assumed to have some interest in natural skin care, compiled from the web?

If not, would it be ethical to call these professionals at work (we have work emails only) and ask if we can send them our flyer by email?
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted by tdbill on 2/8/2007 at 10:13 AM Member
    You are riding a fine line their. Where did you get your list? Chances are, your email would be considered spam. I would try to promote your workshop in different ways.
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 2/8/2007 at 10:58 AM Accepted
    Hi lwaks,

    It is not only a question of ethics, but also legalities, and the latter can cost you a lot of money if you are in violation of the laws that are in place (see CAN-SPAM below).

    In your first question, what you are thinking of doing is called "scrapping" or "harvesting". This is definitely not a good thing ethically and I don't give legal advice on CAN-SPAM Act (this is what establishes requirements for those who send commercial email) because there are so many areas of it that are gray.

    That's what a good attorney is for, especially when a violation is subject to to fines of up to $11,000 - per violation.

    However, I do recommend you read this digested version of the CAN-SPAM Act https://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm

    It has the information you need (which will create more questions) and further clariification and updates are available through the links.

    For your next question, sure, I think this is ethical if guidelines are adhered to, but frankly, even when you call them on the phone at work, most people are not going to want to divulge their email to you because they don't know who are and don't really know what value you will bring in the future.

    A better idea is to post the details of the workshop and create a signup function on a separately created page on your website, and when you call people on the phone and if they are interested you can give them the URL.

    Then, when they go to this page on their own, if they want, besides registering for the workshop, they can also signup to join your email marketing/newsletter list (you do have one, right?) thus giving explicit permission for future communications.

    Of course, it doesn't hurt while you have them on the phone to ask them if you can email them the workshop info, as some will say "sure" but having this website option gives you more validity and no doubt will lead to a higher conversion rate.

    I hope that helps.
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(E-Marketing)