Yesterday, I received an email from the director of marketing and sales at one of the local Marriot Hotels in Northeast Ohio. He was sending me a reminder that the hotel was about to celebrate its grand opening, and my presence at the function would be appreciated.
Problem 1) The email arrived at my private email address, an address people only get if they have ongoing business relations with me and I know them and trust them. It's an address that hasn't received a single piece of direct spam since I created it more than two years ago.
Problem 2) Ready for this? He sent the email to 590 people and DIDN'T blind carbon copy them!
So, not only was my email address placed on a mailing list without my permission, it was also shared with every other recipient on the list. I now have a list of 590 email addresses that presumably belong to business people of some influence in our local market, given to me courtesy of the friendly folks at Marriot. Does anyone else see the problem with this?
It gets better. I respond to the email, asking him how he received my email address and why I was able to view his entire recipient list. He didn't know how my address got on the list. That's right - there is no record of me having ever signed up for his email blasts, and there is no record of which lists were given to him to form his mailing list.
He ignored the part of my inquiry regarding having allowed the recipients list to be viewable. Actually, he ignored this three times in three subsequent emails, and I eventually gave up asking.
I'm not going to bother expounding on the title of this rant. It's pretty self explanatory. No, I have much more interesting things to ponder, like...
...what should I do with the email addresses? I'm not bound by Marriot's Privacy Policy (which I believe he broke when he published those addresses for me to see). The possibilities are endless!
I suppose I could sell them. Or I could use them to blast Equentity LLC services to these unsuspecting souls (backlinks, how I love thee). But these are such mundane ideas. I need something more creative.
You tell me! What would you do with a list of email addresses belonging to prominent business people in your area?
Disclaimer: This discussion is just for fun. I have no intentions of doing anything with the addresses Marriot gave me. But the possibilities are fun to imagine :)
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But really, working hard to do so, there is a potential good marketing ethics question here.
I go to conferences ( I was at hostingcon and will be at ispcon) and I would love to take all the business cards I have and will collect and send out a very nice looking and professional message to that list of potential customers.
But I surely don't want to Tick any of them off! Per usual, I think I've answered my own question, and per usual the question is a good dose of common sense mixed with the knowledge of how to BCC people:-)
Some companies just do not understand the problems with this and have no one to manage the "IT department"... I expect them to realize this in, oh, 10 more years.
I've seen very well protected get harvested due to gross human error like this.
George, I've not done what you've suggested myself, but I've had to hold myself back from doing it many times. The only reason I won't is because most of the time it would put me in the position of looking like a bully to others in the same business community. But I *will* reply to everyone when my mother-in-law sends around an Internet hoax to all of her buddies. After all, it's always responsible to fight misinformation :)
I did point out to him the legalities of his decision, but more as an advisor, not in a threatening manner.