Ok well today I was talking to a gal that has been in the industry for a while and we were talking about contact managers and autoresponders. She began to tell me about her time with a company (an MLM/Networking company) where she had reached the top leadership possition and was also a trainer. The company had invited her to go to different training events around the country and speak with the corporate team. As part of this they had given her a list of Distributors that were in the company that were not part of her team or a dominant team within the company, so she could communicate with them and inform them about events and trainings.
As we were talking she had told me that just recently that company had canceled her Distributor agreement (basicly firing her) without any real reason (which is wrong and unethical on its own) but they did it anyway. She had actually started working another business almost a year prior but claims she never cross recruited and in my opinion there is nothing wrong with that. However, now that she is no longer with the company she wanted to use this list that she had been given by the company to start marketing her new oportunity which is now her main opportunity. I understand that what the company had done to her was not right but at the same time using that list to contact people for her new opportunity is unethical in my opinion.
While that had me concerned the real thing that surprised me in our conversation wasn’t that she wanted to use this list but that she wanted to start sending these people automated emails and broadcasts. Let’s be clear right now, sending Automated Marketing emails to anyone without their permission is “SPAM” and you should never do it no matter how you got the list. Just because a list is fresh and the people are real doesn’t give you the right to send them automated emails about your business.
I would be OK with her sending a follow up email in regards to what happened as she calls them (i.e. Left a message, Busy, or interested), but to just start blasting them with emails is why we have we are stuck dealing with the CAN-SPAM act in the first place. Not to mention the fact that using this list in any way to build a business outside of the company that gave her the list is Unethical. I know that there are people that teach a method of recruiting from within the industry and I am not against this as a whole but the way this gal came in posseession of the list makes, her use of the list for other porposes questionable at best.
There are enough questionable people out there you don’t need to be one of them so lets work hard to make sure the industry cleans up.
Good luck and happy recruiting.