Question

Topic: E-Marketing

2 Mrktg Teams Merge, What About Our Dnc Lists?

Posted by Anonymous on 3/31/2010 at 10:35 AM ET 125 Points
Recently, I was part of two marketing teams coming together in a company acquisition. We are trying to figure out what the best practices are for merging our email marketing and what do we do about our individual Do Not Contact lists?

The dilemma is:
The two companies targeted similar industries, but not a complete overlap. Since they each had different products, one DNC/opt-out list is for company A's products, but not company B's.
So if, for example, company A promotes their products to an audience and receives a certain number of opt-outs, they technically didn't opt-out of company B's products, they may find company B's to be something they do want. (Or vice versa)

So we have been going back and forth on: Do we just combine them and move on, and accept the extra drop offs? Or is there a better solution than operating w/ multiple DNC lists? Can we use one DNC list to promote the opposite products? That way we give all those recipients and option to see the other company's products?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by melissa.paulik on 3/31/2010 at 10:48 AM Accepted
    I'm not sure what the law says, but I would combine them, honor opt outs from both companies, and move on. If you are marketing well, the opt outs probably only make a small dent in your entire list and IMO it's the right thing to do.

    Melissa
  • Posted on 3/31/2010 at 10:56 AM Accepted
    You'll have to merge the two opt-out lists. Do not contact means that they opt-out of all mailings from a particular company, regardless of who sends it.

    You cannot:

    ** send messages to anyone who has opted out of receiving messages from you

    ** help another company send messages to those people

    ** have another company send messages to those people on your behalf

    More details of FTC rules here:

    https://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

    Jodi
  • Posted by Mario R on 3/31/2010 at 11:29 AM Accepted
    Hi, I understand the urge to cross-promote as you suggest, but if you are truly now one entity, you should merge both DNC lists. If the companies merged, one division's general obligations become the other's so it'd be a bit arbitrary to leave e-mail marketing lists separate from this reality. I wouldn't recommend doing it.
  • Posted on 3/31/2010 at 11:45 AM Author
    Thanks everyone-it's good to know our intuition was leaning the right direction. This has been a great help.
  • Posted by matthewmnex on 3/31/2010 at 8:41 PM Member
    Please don't confuse the law with best practice :)

    Best practice is determined by what works best for the industry from a commercial standpoint.

    The law is all about what is legally allowed.

    If I am a sales/marketing/business development person from company A and I personally wite a sales oreited email to a potential prospect, that is not spam.

    Spam is the sending of 'Millions or Hundreds of millions' of unsolicitted emails to email addresses that were stolen or harvested illegally online.

    These persons in your list voloutarily gave their email addresses originally which means that once upopn a time they were interested in something you had to sell.

    My advice - CONTACT ALL OF THEM AGAIN - fom the other brand (before you finalise the re brand). Re qualify the leads and get them back into your optin lists.

    Some of them might get a little irritated, but some of them may now be ready to buy.

    Best practice in this case is (see this as an opportunity to REQUALIFY and REACTIVATE some of your DNC lists.

    Just be careful how you use your IP address to send to avoid blacklisting of your IP.

    Good luck,

    Matthew
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