Scumbag marketing

Not once, not twice but three times last week I was very ‘kindly’ added to a startups mailing list without consent. This is all kinds of wrong. It’s scumbag marketing and it’s spam.

Firstly it’s illegal. In the UK data protection and privacy is governed by the Information Commissioners Office and specifically in regards to email marketing the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. This protects individuals from receiving spam which is defined as:

“Spam emails are emails sent to you without consent. It is email that you don’t want and didn’t ask for, and its content can cause embarrassment and distress. However, it’s worth remembering that the sender generally doesn’t target recipients personally. The same spam email can be sent to millions of people at the same time and the addresses can often be guessed.”

On three occasions in the last week Scottish startups that I don’t use and have never subscribed to started to send me marketing emails. It’s disappointing to see and is not only illegal but also entirely unprofessional.

Privacy and data protection is of the upmost importance for any organisation but especially so for a startup which needs to build trust with their users and customers. If I’m receiving spam from your startup what makes you think I would go on to to entrust you with more valuable data? Fat chance I’ll ever give you payment details if you’re already misusing my data.

How did these startups get my email address in the first place? It’s certainly wasn’t in anyway where I had given explicit consent. In the case of two of the companies I suspect I know how they obtained my email address. One of them; the founder was a subscriber to a mailing list I do, the Scottish StartupDigest, and had added my to there marketing campaign. Subscribing to a service I provide does not equal consent to subscribe me to your mailing lists.

The second startup was more distressing. I had connected with one of the founders on LinkedIn, just because I’m a connection in a personal capacity on a social network does not give you the right to add me to mailing list.

As ever I won’t name the companies publicly, that’s entirely unfair. But I do hope this post will be of some use and prevent others from making the same mistake.

For more information on spam and how to make sure you’re not spamming people check out the ICO.