Leads Are People Too

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has developed a best practices document for generating leads so that unscrupulous folks don't tarnish the growing market for acquiring consumers.

Among the list of recommended practices are:

Advertisers/Publishers/Vendors must not rent, resell or trade the lead without consumer’s consent as outlined in their privacy policy.

Auto-responder and prompts are recommended to confirm the consumer’s interest and to provide an opportunity to halt/ continue marketing. A clear opt-out should be visible.

Publishers/Vendors will make available the registered consumer’s IP address and time stamp to show proof of registration upon request by the advertiser.

These are obvious steps to take, but unfortunately, many companies are willing to coerce and deceive consumers in order to make a buck. Not long ago I bought theater tickets, and was offered "free trials" of some magazines, but the magazines were automatically charged to the credit card that I used to purchase the tickets. Needless to say I wasn't happy and immediately got a refund for all of the magazines.