If you're a business with a mailing list that may be of questionable quality, there are three possible options open to you. One is to err on the safe side, dump the whole list and start over using known best practices for list building. This is commendably cautious, but sometimes hard to justify to the marketing department. Another is to ignore your doubts and just keep sending to the whole list anyway: this is the kind of thing that gets you into spam blacklists. The third option is to do what's called a permission pass, which is to send a brief message to all the addresses on your list asking if they want to remain on it. The message should contain no advertising copy (to reduce the risk of it being seen as a kind of surreptitious spam) and the default should be to unsubscribe: in other words, if someone doesn't write back and say 'Yes! Keep me on your list!', you should drop their mail address. A permission pass is a gray area — it's a tacit admission that you've done things the wrong way in the past, but also a declaration that you want to start doing them the right way. Permission pass mails should be a last resort, but they shouldn't be viewed as spam.

A few days back, the spam traps caught a couple of emails sent from propinvestors.co.za. The messages had the subject 'Data Cleansing', and read:

Due to the nature of our business and in accordance with the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act of 2002 and the Consumer Protection Act coming in effect on 24 October 2010 we would like to "cleanse" our database and confirm if you would like to receive our information and that it is not being sent to you in error. Unlike spam, which is totally unsolicited, our e-mail marketing is aimed only at existing and interested customers. If you opt in you will become an exclusive member of our property marketing organisation ... If you would like to opt out you will immediately be removed for the database and will receive no further correspondence from us.

There were a couple of small problems here. First, the addresses that the message was sent to had never been provided to propinvestor.co.za, so they were cleaning a purchased or scraped mailing list rather than a mailing list that they had legitimately built. That already puts them well towards the black end of the gray area. Second, they provided an explicit opt-out option. On a properly run permission pass, there is no opt-out option. If the recipient doesn't respond, they're off the list. Period. The inclusion of the opt-out option suggested that the senders didn't really know what they were doing.

Needless to say, I didn't respond with either opt-out or opt-in.

Fast-forward six days, and the traps pick up another batch of mails from the same source. This time, they're advertising mails. propinvestors.co.za has now officially blown it. Their permission pass was worthless, because it assumed that non-response meant that recipients wanted to be on the list. This is the exact opposite of the way that a permission pass mailshot is supposed to work. So either they're unclear on the concept, or the ostensible permission pass was simply window-dressing.

Insert your own 'facepalm' graphic, or the word 'FAIL' in big blocky white letters here.