I gave a speech to the Vermont/New Hampshire Direct Marketing Group on Friday about email marketing strategy. Well I guess you can call it a speech. I was scheduled to be there in person, and a last minute family emergency made it impossible for me to travel, so thanks to the organizers, I did a webinar to a room full of people. It was an interesting way to present, and thanks to my friend Bud Reed at Timberline Interactive, I was able to interact with the audience (Bud was a great facilitator).
During the question and answer session, one of the attendees asked about one of the points I made. I indicated that not only is it bad form to use prechecked opt-in boxes, but in my opinion (as a non-lawyer) it is a CAN-SPAM violation.
I notice that direct marketers, particularly catalogers tend to love this technique. It is kind of a "let me trick you into opting in, and if you don't look to closely, I may trap you as a subscriber" technique. This is a throwback to the old postal days of let me do everything to build the biggest list, because if I don't sell you something, I can sell your name to some other direct marketer, and make some money off you that way.
It just doesn't make sense in the email world, and anyone who is prechecking boxes just doesn't get it. This person made the point that before they prechecked the box, no one was signing up for their newsletter. When they prechecked the box, hardly anyone unchecked in and rarely did they get a complaint. Well, does this mean it is working?
Sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper to find out what is really going on. In this case, the only way to get on this company's email list was by also requesting a postal catalog. No catalog request, no email newsletter. Additionally, there was no easy way to get to the opt-in form from the home page. So where is all this going? Well I guess what it says to me is just because your customer is not checking the box doesn't mean you have to check it for them. It may just mean you are making it to hard for them to check it. Check it out.