What does it take to get someone to understand that emailing is about accuracy and permission?

ZoomInfo appears not to get this. Well, I actually think that they do get it, but they just don’t care about it. Getting permission before emailing is bad for business at least as far as I can see that they are concerned.

In an article today, Ken Magill exposes them for starting “a service that allows business-to-business marketers to download lists of names addresses and e-mail addresses of the people in its database.”

So, let’s see how accurate they are. How about looking at my entry?

Well, just looking at this page, they get my affiliations kind of right, and also wrong. For instance, I’m not the President and CEO of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy. That would be Anne Mitchell. They also refer to my membership on the Board of Whitehat.com, a position that I haven’t ever held. But, I suppose that’s okay since they also list me as the President of Mail Abuse Prevention System, LLC. I did used to work for MAPS, but wasn’t anywhere near that level. Besides, MAPS is now long dead.

So, right off the bat, maybe we should just refer to Zoominfo as “An Awesome Directory of Incorrect and Out of Date References”.

And then there are the references that they used to compile my entry. My favorite was http://free-personal-ads-wanted-sex-partner-near-hays-kansas.themasterwithin.ca/arch/4/. (Note that the link goes to a content-free page for…. something, I’m just not sure what.)

And as for their claim that they send “e-mails to all the addresses in its database on a regular basis giving people an opportunity to opt out” … Well, let’s just say that I have never gotten one and I appear to be in their database. So we’ll also just say that this particular part just makes me mad.

Really, people. Think long and hard (and should I even say that right after mentioning that source?) before you even consider using ZoomInfo to do anything other than sully paper to then take to the… executive washroom.