The Opt-In Statement Assume you are working for a company that sells music onlin

Question

The Opt-In Statement

Assume you are working for a company that sells music online. The marketing department would like to send e-mails to customers who have purchased music from the Web site. These e-mails would use information about the genres of music customers have purchased in the past and would offer those discounts on new releases in those genres. Discuss your thoughts/feelings about marketing managers using an opt-in statement for permission to send such emails that wouldappear when customers make their first purchase. Should all businesses/organizations have the opt-in statement? Or should they only have an opt-out statement in which you are automatically enrolled unless you accept/check the out-out statement?

Explanation / Answer

In today’s technological world which is highly influenced by the number of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., Direct Marketing is still a relevant mode of communication used by both the individual and corporate marketers. Direct marketing refers to a form of advertising in which marketers directly communicate with their prospective and existing customers through a variety of media like SMS, MMS, E-mail, automated calling systems, websites, telephone, promotional letters, fliers, etc. The objective of using direct marketing by the organisations is mainly to find new customers or to keep in touch with the existing customers. Although direct marketing has many advantages like wider reach, cost-effective but the downside of direct marketing is that it is a highly exploited channel by the spammers which has resulted into lost credibility and lower engagement of the users. Therefore, several directives on privacy and electronic communications have been enforced by the governing bodies in most of the countries. This is to deal with the risk of spamming and help control the excessive use of direct marketing.

Under the regulations, marketers are advised to make use of “Opt-in” and “Opt-out” feature at the time of collecting customer details for marketing purposes. Taking “prior consent” of the user is an important aspect in the underlying guidelines. In simple terms, prior consent in direct marketing is the permission given by the user to the organisation or individual marketer to use his/her personal details such as email id, mobile number, location, etc. for all sorts of marketing communications. This is where the opt-in and opt-out statements come into action. Opt-in refers to a tick-box that is normally given on one of the pages of company’s website which, if filled by the user, indicates that the customer is willing to be contacted by the organisation for a particular form of marketing communication. This also means that if the user has not ticked the check box, the marketer cannot use the customer’s details in any which way. On the other hand, Opt-out is exactly opposite of opt-in, where the default state is that the user will be sent the marketing mails or other collaterals unless the customer ticks the opt-out box to convey that he/she do not want to be contacted. It is quite obvious that the opt-out statement is more beneficial for the marketer as it assumes a default right to advertise to the customer which results in higher collection rates and e-mails being sent to more number of customers.

In the given scenario, the marketing department of the company, that sells music online, would like to send e-mails to their customers who have purchased music from the website in the past. In my opinion, as an ethical way of doing business, the marketing managers should necessarily make use of the opt-in statement to send the emails to the customers. Through opt-in, the marketing team will be able to take the prior consent of the customers indicating whether they would like to be contacted by the company or not. I believe all the businesses and organisations should have opt-in statement instead of the opt-out statement, because under the opt-out statement, a customer’s privacy rights are violated where it is assumed that he/she would like to be contacted. Not every customer is attentive or vigilant enough to check the opt-out box and as a result is automatically enrolled for the unsolicited emails and other marketing communications.

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