I love your site, it truly is a Beautiful Calling!

Anyway, I don’t operate a business at all but do have a blog. I wll keep the information in mind!

Jenn @ Beautiful Calling’s last blog post..You Don’t Need All That! (Soapnut Giveaway)

Always respect the optouts and optins.

Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach’s last blog post..20 Times 101 Ways To Earn Money Online! Part 1

(This one seems to have got through – go figure! And thank you for enabling the comment editor. I appreciate it!)

janice’s last blog post..How to Write like Adam Lambert

if you…had your email address published openly on your site and I happened to be selling articles that were relevant to your web site I am free to use that email address to send you bulk email as much as I like until such time as you unsubscribe.

This is tantamount to email address harvesting and Australia have a law prohibiting the creation or use of software intended to harvest email addresses.

Sure you could do it manually but then there’s the argument that all web browsers are software…

Marc – WelshScribe’s last blog post..The Rhydian Roberts Guide To Successful Freelancing

@Marc – In Australia, there is an legal obligation to provide an opt-out link which *must* remove them from the list.

From my experience of lawyers, the letter of the law comes down to knowing what your legal boundaries are so that you know when you are breaking them and when you are not. Yes, some businesses are known for actively choosing to break the law – we see it in courts regularly. (http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25312670-5014239,00.html) That said, all it does is show the boundaries in which a business can legally operate.

From there, with the help of a professional marketer (either in-house, from an agency or as a consultant) you can sit down and devise a strategic plan to build a mailing list. Clearly, highly successful mailing lists that have excellent open rates and link-through rates are those that are driven and fed by people who really do wish to receive those emails and are legitimately interested in the content. A good strategic plan will evaluate all available options for building the list and select those in the best strategic interest of the business. In most cases, this will always be a process of confirmed explicit consent and will look to paint the business is a positive light in respect to ethics which ties back to Melinda’s comment about the spirit of the law.

@Melinda Sorry, perhaps you missed that my offer of spamming you with offers to sell you articles was tongue in cheek!! :}

@ Kristy. If my email is published on my web site you do NOT have permission to add it to your mailing list unless I expressly request to be added. I know that is in the Australian law, and when we get back from the zoo this afternoon I’ll find it and add it here. If you add me to an email list without my permission then you have broken the law.

From a personal point of view, if I haven’t given you express permission to continue contacting me after the initial contact then I will consider your emails spam and will mark them as such. Same as Marc, I will try and get you blacklisted because from my perspective you are spamming.

From a business owner’s point of view, if a marketing person suggested such tactics I would (a) refuse – because I don’t think it’s ethical and ‘I’ don’t want to be treated that way so I will not treat anyone else in that manner. And (b) I’d be looking at getting another marketing advisor who did not use dodgy tactics.

I think this discussion is on the difference between following the letter of the law or the spirit of the law and looking for loopholes. For me, and hopefully for any other ethical business owner, they will treat their customers and potential customers the way they wish to be treated and will comply with the spirit of the law.

Regarding writing an article on this. If you would like to submit a guest article to me via the Contact page I would be happy to look at it and consider it. However I should point out that I do not pay for guest posts, having a bio and link to your site is generally considered payment for the exposure that guest posting brings.

Thanks for an interesting discussion!