Your mailing list should be labeled FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
I’m going to throw a question down here for you, and I’d like you to take some time to think about it. In fact, why don’t you shoot on down to the comments section and let us know about it? I’m talking about the reason you won’t give out your home address when someone asks if you’d like to join their direct mailing list. What holds you back? What is it you think they’re going to do with it once you give up your hard earned anonymity?
Actually, if you can move past your outrage over the fact that you’re a perfectly nice person, you run a legitimate business and you’re not actually out to rob them blind, it’s easy to understand why they’re dragging their feet. If you walked up to a random stranger on the street and said, “Hi, I’m Bob, I run a (fill in company description here). Give me your home address and I’ll send you a coupon” you’d better be prepared for them to whip out a phone and call the cops to report you
for stalking…or at least tell you to get lost.
If you have built a relationship with them and they still won’t give you their address, consider the fact that they don’t know (for sure) who you intend to give it to. If you gave your best friend your phone number and they gave it to a random wino on the street, would you be happy? Of course not. You’d never give that friend any of your personal information again.
There’s good money in selling addresses for marketing campaigns. Sad, but true. That’s why so many companies go out of their way to include a disclaimer that they are going to give your address to their partners-they get paid for each address they hand over. Your customers aren’t usually willing to hand out their personal information to someone who’s going to help load their mailbox and email Inbox with junk mail.
That’s why security disclaimers are so important. Right now, I want you to commit to promising yourself and your customers that you’ll never give in to the temptation to sell their address. If later on you take on a marketing partner you can handle that on a case-by-case basis, giving your customers the option to receive their mailings or not. When you ask for their personal information, however, and you should since there’s so much you can’t do through email advertising (Yes, I know, it’s blasphemy), make sure they know exactly what you’re going to do with their address and never deviate from that.
Keeping their personal information personal, private and for your eyes only is the cornerstone of building the trust you need to make your direct mail marketing list grow.
Bonus Question: Can you guess whose eyes are hiding behind the glasses in the photo above? Post your comments below!