Congratulations! You’ve just sold somebody your product online! Now you’ve got marketing gold: Their email address, other contact info, purchase history, and other dirt on ’em. Time to add them to your bulk mailing list and start sending promotions their way, right?

Not necessarily. Let’s say you want to give your new customer recommendations on other products you have that are similar to what they bought. Even if they’ve bought a product from you, they’ve technically only given you permission to contact them about that one single purchase, and perhaps send them a package. While emailing customers with product suggestions is an excellent idea, I strongly advise you to make your plan to email them and their consent explicit.

Surprise Emails: We won’t tell you before we send you a letter

If you put no reference to the fact that you may email the customer on your order form, you may be accused of sending unsolicited commercial email (spam), and will be punished accordingly. This may include the following:

• your messages being flagged as spam and blocked automatically
• customer complaints due to being contacted without their request or permission
• damage to our business’ reputation for allegedly using shady practices
• your ISP pulling the plug on your account because they consider you a mass spammer (which you are if you don’t do your email right)

None of these are enticing options, and they can really put a damper on your company’s image. It’s hard to clean up a ding like that, even if it wasn’t done on purpose. Skip the headache. Make it easy on yourself and your clients by using another option.

Image via Wikipedia

Opt-Out: We’ll email you unless you check the box

An opt-out process, in which customers must check a box to avoid being on your mailing list, is better but not ideal. Users may assume that they should leave the box unchecked if they aren’t interested, as is the case with many other website sign-up processes. They may forget that the default option was to be on the list and send your messages to the junk mail abyss, never to see the light of a monitor again. If you make the checkbox easy to miss, it seems a bit underhanded; if you draw attention to it, they may be more likely to opt out. In short, it’s not worth it.

In the same category is automatically checking an opt-in box to join your mailing list, etc. It may be in black and white, but it’s still confusing. A person suckered into subscribing isn’t valuable like a truly interested one. Better to just be straightforward: Skip the grey-hat tactics and read on.

Opt-In, a.k.a. Permission Marketing: We’ll only email you if you allow us

The best solution is an opt-in process. You display the option prominently, explain how you want to give them recommendations which match their tastes, and tell the customer that they’ll be rewarded for allowing this email. They look forward to the messages and you’re seen as the hero company, helpfully sharing new product suggestions with them. Okay, maybe not hero, per se — more like his slightly-annoying yet lovable sidekick with a side job in sales — but it sure beats the junk-mail-toting bad guy image you could have accidentally put on. Get permission to contact people the first time and you’ll have a much better chance of your carefully-crafted, spam-free messages drawing them back again and again.

P.S. – Though it’s several years old, Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing goes into great detail about this whole spiel, and is still relevant at its core.