First a quick "thanks" to Mike Merz for creating the forum and all the great IMs here that make this community rock. For the most part I just lurk, read everyone's advice and mentally grow.
I need you-guys (or is that yous guys-es?) advice.
A little background:
I've developed a lead generation tool that is working very good. It's been running for only a week and on average it gives 40 highly-targeted leads every day. I know that's not really enough time to know how this thing will perform long-term, I'm just giving you an idea of what it's doing right now. With the way the leads are generated, it's expected that over time the number of leads per day will continue to increase - I'm just not sure how quickly that number will grow, and a week is not really enough time to make that determination.
Without boring you guys with how the tool works, let me just summarize it by saying it's 100% free and it really does benefit it's users to sign up and refer others. It's 100% win-win. I win because they opt-in to my site, they win because they get free traffic, and the more of their contacts they refer, the more traffic they stand to gain.
I'd like to create another win-win. After watching this thing work I got to thinking about how I could use it to benefit others even more than it does right now.
I have a provision in my terms of service (that you have to manual check that you accept when you sign up) that says I may share your information with the person who referred you to the site. I think this is pretty common, and for the most part, whoever referred you, they know your info already anyway.
There may be those that put a link to the tool in their signature, etc, and they send traffic to the site without knowing really who it is before they opt-in, but that's cool - I'd love for people to use the tool as a free list-building tool.
Since most people are sending people to the site that they already know, the opt-in structure ends up looking like this:
1. You
2. Your Contacts
3. Their Contacts
4. Their Contacts
5. Etc.
Well, if I share your referrals with you, most of them are going to be people you knew anyway. And given the fact that not everyone will decide to participate - my "list" of your contacts will be smaller than your list of contacts anyway - There's no real advantage for you if I just give you your referrals.
Now for my "dilemma"
I'd like to give you all the referrals for several levels deep. So you've spent a couple years building your list and you know that all your followers have built lists, and their followers, etc. What if you were able to get all of those lists?
Well, before you lynch me and tell me how that's horrible (because you don't want it done to you - the nerve of this guy wanting to "steal" my list...), let me remind you that's what you do every time you send a product through your list - you get your list to go over to some guy you may or may not know and opt-in for some free info, which they do. Then they see there's an affiliate program so they run that product through their list...
You've effectively given this guy not just your list, but also the lists of your contacts, and the lists of their contacts, etc.
What if instead of giving those lists away, you were able to have them for yourself without having to create and run your own product? This is exactly what I want to do with this tool - by it's nature this is how the tool works.
So the dilemma is - what are the legal ramifications of sharing the contacts? I have a really good friend who has helped me on some bulk mailing projects (we wrote a system that delivers about 200,000 emails a day without triggering any rbls, spam alerts, etc - an awesome project and a guy who knows a lot about working w/ lists and emails). My friend often gives me legal advice, but this time if I follow him I think I won't be able to use the tool the way I want to.
He says in order for me to share the contact info with others I have to have a second check-box that says "I accept to receive email from affiliates and partners" - or something to that effect. He says putting it in the terms page that they are currently agreeing to isn't enough. He says the second check-box is "mandatory" in order to be legal.
I'm not interested in "breaking the law" or doing anything that in the end would compromise my operation legally, but I really think the second check box will be a major turn-off, and most list-holders will know that and they wouldn't want to participate in using the tool because they wouldn't think they'd get much out of it - and they'd probably be right.
So, I'm putting it out here for you awesome experts with the real-world experience in opt-in and spam rules to give me some guidance.
I want this tool to be very worth-while to other list-builders - I know if I'm helping them, they will help me, but I see this "snag" may prevent me from using it to help others.
Can I just modify my current terms so that I can "give away" contact info not just to the referrer, but to his referrer, his referrer, etc?
I am not in any way giving legal advice, just my opinion...
There are certain "norms" in our industry--when someone enters their email address to get something free for example, they already know and expect they will be emailed repeatedly by the list owner. So a little explanation such as "we don'r spam", etc is enough.
For what you're trying to do, because it's outside of those norms, requires more explanation. Even if it's legal, you will have a lot of people very mad at you because I can promise you they won't read your terms. Some people get mad from 1 single email after they've signed up, taken the free gift, and agreed to e emailed--those types will blast you with awful comments and mail.
In this case I think it's better to get lower response and make sure people are clear. Just my 2 cents.
Considering the fact that 99% of people won't read your Terms of Service / Privacy Policy, you're going to get a lot of angry emails if you didn't put up either a separate checkbox or perhaps added something else which would get the user's attention.
It doesn't sound to me as though you're doing anything
especially different from some of the well known list
builder systems such as ListDotCom, List Bandit, List
Viral, etc.
I'd check out their terms of service and see how they
word their data sharing policies.
It might also be worth looking at how some of the more
common co-registration services word their terms.
First I agree with John Taylor. I do agree that you need to cover your butt.
I would say that anyone that comes into your system could/would be considered
a marketing partner.
You should amend your Privacy Statement to include that you may share your subscribers
data with trusted marketing partners.
As well, amend your opt in statement to say something similar to this:
"I agree to receive email marketing from you and your marketing partners."
Then put some language into your system when people join that identifies them as marketing partners.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an attorney and this should not be considered to be legal advice.
Also - I would be interested in learning more about how to participate in your system.
Get ahold of me and lets see what we can do together.
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