It’s the first week of January and like most sales people (or most people people) I find myself either:
a) trying to remember what it is that I do in this vaguely familiar office (clean for the one time all year)
b) pondering what will be different this year and what will stay constant.
OK-that’s an exaggeration- I’m right back chasing my tail just like I always am. But for a few moments on Monday, I was actually marveling that anyone who has a passing knowledge of how business is transacted would still have a problem with Jigsaw from a privacy point of view.
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
When Fowler and I founded Jigsaw we didn’t invent some creepy new concept--we simply created a way to scale a standard business practice (collaborative prospecting) to the web. Salespeople don’t want to spend time talking to uninterested people anymore than those targets want to field their calls and emails--but they need to figure out the information somehow or business reaches a standstill. For top executives (and their admins) in particular, the number of cold calls actually goes down from people that use Jigsaw because members can see the specific titles that are relevant to their pitch and contact the appropriate person directly.
Nor are we the first company to enable this process. The data industry, which can be defined as people selling information about people to other people, is a totally mature market (Dun and Bradstreet was founded in 1849). Companies that no one ever associates with data--eBay, Yahoo, AT&T, Chase, Geico--work together to build profiles about every aspect of their customers’ lives. The reason Jigsaw became such a lightning rod for privacy wonks and industry “experts” is twofold:
-Jigsaw is selling and exchanging data right out in the open- where everyone can see and everyone can take part.
-Jigsaw profiles contain accurate and specific business email addresses, which heretofore were impossible to obtain with significant reach for a reasonable price.
Now before you grab a pitchfork and torch and head for San Mateo, allow me to make the four points that mollify 99.99 % of the business population.
1- Jigsaw data is BUSINESS INFO ONLY. Individual profiles are made up of the following information: name, company, title (at work), physical address (at work), telephone number (at work), email address (at work). That’s it. No mobile numbers, gmail accounts, home info, social security numbers. We don’t know where your kids go to school. No pictures of you auditioning for the Darwin awards in college. Just basic business card data.
2- Anyone can get themselves removed from Jigsaw- just contact us through the website. Interesting fact- 10 times more people have requested to be added to Jigsaw than have asked to be taken off. In addition, Jigsaw allows anyone to set specific, actionable preferences on how they would like to be contacted—something absolutely unheard of in the industry.
3- Jigsaw’s terms of use specifically require that all members abide by all local, state and federal laws--including CAN-SPAM--and we make sure to educate our customers accordingly. Jigsaw’s data is also compliant with the DMA’s B2B Ethical Guidelines email provision Article #39.
4- People frequently get hung up on the fact that Jigsaw email addresses, like all compiled email addresses, are not “opt –in.” Get ready here…more blasphemy coming…what the hell does opt-in really mean, anyway? It means this: sometime in the last 10 years, when registering for membership to some random website or while trying to acquire a white paper or 10% off your next Amazon purchase or bidding on that Adult Razor with the 70’s wooden footpad you neglected to read the Terms of Use written in 1 point font or uncheck some moving box and wham! You have just agreed to accept “occasional communications from our partners,” meaning whoever or wherever that site sells your “opt-in” to. Congratulations- you’ve just joined that big “opt-in” universe where all the major corporations of the world can spam cannon the crap out of you with a straight face. If anything Jigsaw is being straightforward and open- we provide the data to corporations and make them begin a legitimate marketing campaign without hiding behind some nebulous “opt-in.”
Not everyone will agree that someone’s corporate contact information is by definition not private. My favorite nemesis, Corporate Privacy Officers, always blow their hall monitor whistles and insist that we take their names off Jigsaw (usually as their VP’s of Marketing are signing an enterprise license!). Most of them are from public companies and have their profiles proudly exhibited on the corporate website, their blog, Linked In, Facebook, Cyberdork.com, and half a dozen other sites. I always want to ask them, so I’ll ask you now:
Have you tried getting yourself removed from Hoover’s or Harte Hanks lately? How about from a Fortune 500 company’s CRM database? Are you searchable on Google? Google Images? (ahem, nice tights, Sir Lancelot)
BankofAmerica’s credit card offers list? Talk about evil- they have chopped down more trees than the Lorax Once-ler!!!!
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