Privacy Policies And Email Marketing

One of the first lessons that you’ll learn in doing business online is the importance of a mailing list. A mailing list captures the visitors who decide not to purchase your products or avail of your services the first time they load up your website. There are roughly around 99.7% of these visitors, at the average. Immediately, you’ll realize how critical it is not to lose these visitors, as they could account for a great percentage of the sales for your future offers. In Internet marketing, a lost visitor is a lost sale, after all.

To prevent this loss of visitors and potential sales, online businessmen have resorted to the use of a mailing list to acquire the contact details of the users who get to visit their website. Gold is in your mailing list, as many people proclaim, and this statement is very true. With a mailing list, you would be able to employ an email marketing campaign to warm up your subscribers for a future sale and to inform them of your newest products.

But this method is fraught with risks, mostly of the legal kind.

The reason? Email marketing deals with a very sensitive right guaranteed for each individual regardless of race, nationality, age, gender or creed. This right is called privacy, or the right to be secure with one’s personal details and against unwanted intrusions.

People generally hesitate to give out their personal information for fear that this will be used for purposes other than those they have consented to. This hesitance, if left unanswered, could spell doom for your mailing list, for your email marketing campaign, and potentially, for your business as well.

It is very important that you assure your visitors that their personal information would be protected once they do decide to subscribe to your mailing list. This can be done through what is termed as a Privacy Policy. A Privacy Policy is a printed declaration stating the following salient guarantees:

• An explanation as to how their personal information would be used. This should be as detailed as possible. A Privacy Policy takes the form of a contract, and any act on your part that is not covered by this declaration would be tantamount to a breach of the same, which could bring about some dire consequences for your business.

• A manner by which your subscribers can edit their personal information. More than the benefit this would give you, as enabling your members to reflect appropriate changes on the information they have submitted would make it easier for you to conduct your email marketing campaign, this allowance would also reassure your subscribers that they could easily change any erroneous detail that would appear on their profile.

• Guarantee that the network by which their personal information will be transmitted is a secure one. All efforts should have been made to avoid any infringement on the said network which would result in the theft of the said information.

• Provide contact details for people who would be able to answer any queries and concerns about their submittal of their personal information. This is a must, first, because it will assure them that they are not dealing with a dummy entity, and second, because they will know the identity of the other party to the contract.

• Provide an exit point. Perpetual contracts are generally disallowed. Giving your subscribers the option to unsubscribe to the service, and the promise that their personal information would be discarded when such a choice is made, would go a long, long way in assuring them of the safety of your methods.

As we have discussed above, privacy is a very sensitive issue for many people. Reassuring them that you have their best interests in mind, through a Privacy Policy that would respect their rights, would be a key component to your email marketing campaign’s success.

This article is written to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered in it. It is provided with the understanding that the author and publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.