ReturnPath's new article on "Lead Generation Do's and Don'ts" should be considered a must read. How timely! Just yesterday, I was on a call with a client, trying to help them dig out from a deliverability issue (high spam complaints and blocking), and it turned out that lead generation was the problem.

See, our client got snowed. The lead generation vendor said the list was opt-in, but it wasn't. They paid X-thousand dollars for a list they now can't use, because it's a spam list, and therefore not allowed under our terms of service. They were able to launch a mail to the list before we caught it (yuck), and the stats on their IP address spiked so clearly and significantly as to draw a big red arrow pointing back to this bad practice.

The guidance from Stephanie Miller is very similar to the guidance I gave to our client:

• Vet your vendor carefully. In this case, the vendor sold our client a sack of rotting potatoes with a gold ribbon and a label saying "opt-in list." It clearly was not what the vendor claimed it was.
• Get opt-in permission, not opt-out. This means that if your vendor's telling you they'll send an email to recipients saying "if you don't opt-out, we're going to give your email address to company X," they're doing it wrong. Think about it. People miss that message. Spam filters eat that message. Open detection never works with 100% of recipients. So how does "opt-out" equate with consent? It doesn't.
• Don't assume that just because people didn't think to opt-out, that they want your mail. Yeah, lots of people won't opt-out, but will happily report every mail you send as spam. You might as well be wearing a big sign saying "PLEASE SEND MY MAIL TO THE BULK FOLDER" - because that's what ISPs will start doing.
• If people aren't expecting to receive mail from you, don't mail them. Just because they opted-in to some third-party pool of addresses (maybe) doesn't mean they want or expect mail from you. Lists like this (as we once again confirmed with this client issue) draw much higher spam complaints, and draw deliverability problems.

Finding a reputable vendor can be tricky. It might be more appropriate to reach out to us for specific advice, but generally speaking, you need to make sure that any such vendor is going to do an OPT-IN process across the board. For both their own lists, and for the way they're going to introduce you to their subscribers. That means:

• People have to opt-in to end up on the list rental or lead generation list. A sneaky "because you registered for this free technology publication our privacy policy says we can sell your name" (which is, unfortunately, a common practice) is not opt-in.
• People have to opt-in to end up on your list. That means when the list rental or lead generation site presents you to prospective subscribers, those subscribers have to take an affirmative and positive action to end up on your email list. That means they have to click on a link, or respond to the email, or sign up on a website page specific to your list. "They didn't happen to opt-out" is not a good enough reason for them to end up on your list.

Incidentally, I've referred a number of clients over to ReturnPath, and they do things correctly. They're not paying me to say this (and we don't make any money if you sign up with them), but I have been working for years with companies who've used Return Path's list rental and lead generation services, and have never run into these kind of problems.