What do you do if you have a large volume of your customer database which has no email address alongside it, or has an email address that is no longer valid?

You obviously want to find up to date Email addresses for these customers and the most popular (cheap) way of doing this, is to use an email append service.

This seemingly innocent process has taken a bit of flack recently, first being soundly thrashed by the Messaging Anti Abuse Working Group (MAAWG for short) and then very publically pilloried by Experian Cheetahmail.

So what has caused this to happen? And what should you consider before embarking on an email append project?

How does it work?

Email appending is the process of using a third party email list and implementing some sort of matching criteria (present on both your own and the third party data list) to link an Email Address to a person on your database. It is a process that can be fraught with issues, the first of which is the matching criteria.

You really need to make sure you match as much criteria as possible to ensure the person you are matching against is who you think it is.

For example, if all you have is J. Bloggs living at a certain address, but at that is address is a Joe Bloggs and Jane Bloggs, how do you know which one is your subscriber? The more information you have the better (age, gender), so you can be sure you are adding the right users to your list.

The next step is ensuring the emails you end up with have the correct permission to allow you to email them. The ICO (Information Commissionaires Office) recommends permission to use data that has been gathered for third party use, should have active “opt in” consent, not “opt out” implied consent.

Article From: econsultancy.com