# Large fines agreed for charity and business marketing breaches

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/05/17/large-fines-agreed-charity-and-business-marketing-breaches/
- Published: 2011-05-17T18:07:31+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Catching up on some long overdue reading this weekend, I spotted an article in Third
Sector magazine by [Sophie Hudson](http://twitter.com/#%21/missshudson) under the
headline:

>  [Nuisance marketing charities face fines](http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/channels/Governance/Article/1066789/Charities-face-fines-nuisance-marketing)

It transpires that [The Information Commissioner’s Office](http://www.ico.gov.uk)(
ICO – the team that polices the Data Protection Act) has been granted new powers
to fine organisations for ‘making unwanted contact with the public’.

This could be huge news for all organisations that run individual marketing or fundraising
campaigns for four reasons:

## Advertisement

 1. If ‘unwanted contact’ means any contact for which the sender does not have explicit
    permission then ALL prospecting or donor recruitment campaigns run the risk of 
    falling foul of the rules
 2. The rules go beyond trying to clear up junk mail and incorporate email, texts and
    phone calls – but not face-to-face activities (personally, I find someone unsolicited
    on my doorstep more intrusive than a text but maybe that’s just me)
 3. The fines for breach of the rules are scary – up to £500,000
 4. The rules come into effect on 25 May so those organisations who don’t manage their
    contact databases robustly may need to make some changes pretty quickly.

Of course, I subscribe to the idea that poorly targeted marketing wastes money, 
time and damages any brand equity recipients might have felt towards the sender.
I therefore also agree that measures to tighten up spamming, junk mailing, indiscriminate
texts and cold-calling should be considered positive.

However, most organisations don’t do this to any scale and this is why I’m concerned.

[⌊Pills⌉⌊Pills⌉[**‘Most’** organisations aren’t the ones these measures are designed
to curtail.  **‘Most’** organisations aren’t the ones sending spurious emails from
all over the world inviting people to share their bank details or to send money 
to expedite a prize being sent.  **‘Most’** organisations aren’t sending unsolicited
and irrelevant texts for penis extension drugs or free ringtone downloads which 
are far from free.

**‘Most’** organisations are in fact just trying to do what they do, using these
marketing tools and targeting as well as they either know how or can afford to.

And I’ll bet a sizeable amount that **‘most’** organisations are the ones who will
be caught and fined under these new rules, not the root cause organisations whose
practices deserve to be shut down.  After all, the Data Protection Act has been 
around for decades and I still receive unsolicited mail, emails and texts because
organisations either don’t care about the rules or use clandestine clauses buried
in terms and conditions which say that you have to write to a non-existent address
to opt-out.

Secondly, how are start-up or newer organisations supposed to generate any revenue
if they don’t already have a customer base to start with?  The ICO says that it 
is every organisation’s obligation to ask people whether they want to be contacted
in the future at the point of first contact.

So these organisations have to ask permission for future contact before they can
sell something or ask for a donation, without necessarily having built a database
yet?  Does this mean an extra campaign which needs to be paid for before any results
materialise?  To be fair, things aren’t this drastic (I’m being a bit naughty to
make a point).  But, any decent marketer will tell you that to drive action a message
needs to be two things:

 1. Prominent within a marketing communication ie; directly linked to the key feature(
    outcomes, story, product or service) and repeated throughout the email, letter 
    etc
 2. On its own to stand the best chance of being acted upon ie; asking the reader to
    take just one action is nearly always more successful than multiple asks.

But if we raise the prominence of the ‘permission’ message to give us a chance of
recipients saying yes and therefore the opportunity to contact them again in the
future, we have to relegate the sales or fundraising message.

So it’s a catch 22.  Run one campaign with your intended call to action and a subservient‘
future contact’ permission request.  You might get the [⌊Pen red envelopes⌉](https://wfay6x.infiniteuploads.cloud/2026/07/Red-envelopes.jpg)
financial results you need but it’s unlikely you will get as many permissions for
the next campaign which means reducing your contact lists considerably.

Or, find extra resources to run a ‘permission’ campaign as well.  At least with 
media like texts and email, the permission campaigns are cheaper to deliver.

Finally, none of this takes into account that lots of us can’t be bothered to opt
out of e-marketing and simply ignore it.  Does this mean we are still in the contact
list or not?  I might just have been too busy to positively opt-in last month but
that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear from the charity again next month.

I genuinely think the ICO has a thankless task in trying to improve the lives of
consumers in that it can’t protect them without the marketing organisations incurring
costs.  I do hope, however, the powers that be will focus on the root causes of 
this issue and not make things even tougher for organisations just trying to get
their messages across.

How do you think your organisation will be affected?

 * **[Charities last to be told by people that they have moved house](https://fundraising.co.uk/2015/09/18/charities-last-to-be-told-by-people-that-they-have-moved-house/)**(
   18 September 2015)
 * **[DMA reveals the commercial value of awards & what it takes to win](https://fundraising.co.uk/2016/07/06/dma-reveals-commercial-value-awards-takes-win/)**(
   6 July 2016)
 * **[DMA’s whitepaper explains how organisations can better support vulnerable customers](https://fundraising.co.uk/2016/09/22/dmas-whitepaper-explains-organisations-can-better-support-vulnerable-customers/)**(
   22 September 2016)

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