Mailing List - Subscriber data collection Help required

[purple]

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Firstly was not sure what forum to put this post so can a mod move it if this is in the wrong place.

I presently use Groupmail for my mailing lists.

I want to collect more data about my subscribers. I want to collect Title, Full Name, Age and Post code.
Can someone suggest a way of collecting this data. I collect the name and email at present with a basic form.

Can anyone help me to use group mail, or if anyone can suggest another mail list solution.

Also is there data protection implications? anyone know any websites with info on becoming data protection approved.

[Dynamoo]

If you collect personally identifiable data then you would need to register with the office of the Information Commissioner - http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/

[purple]

Originally posted by Dynamoo
If you collect personally identifiable data then you would need to register with the office of the Information Commissioner - http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/

Is email address or post code personally identifiable

[Dynamoo]

Well the law changed recently so I'm a little out of date, so you'd be best off reading the information at the site.

I would say that email address and first part of the postcode (e.g. SW1A and not SW1A 0AA) might just about be acceptable, but a real name and full postcode probably wouldn't.

I get round the problem by just collecting email addresses and no other information.

[drivetowin]

It's only £35 to register and potentially a whacking great fine if you don't register so why take the risk?

[purple]

Originally posted by kbudden
It's only £35 to register and potentially a whacking great fine if you don't register so why take the risk?

How easy is it to register is it just standard forms filling or is there more to it?

[Supercod]

You can do it online, it's dead easy.. just remember if your hosting outside of UK or Europe to pick the correct fields with regards to where the data is held.

Also if you’re taking bank account / credit card information online (and I don't think you will be) it's important that you use a secure server as anyone asking for bank account information via a web page is breaking the rules of the data protection act (hint, hint to the network that's not doing this at present).

This is the link to doing it online http://www.informationcommissioner.g...al.aspx?id=322

[Freebie]

We compromised on the data collected, so we could not identify anyone on our list with the data we hold, but we do hold enough to generate some very useful stats, and it's enough to target ads/mails to this info.

We don't force full name. John Smith might enter John, J Smith, Mr Smith, Smithy etc.
We collect age group, not age.
We collect county, but not postcode or address.
We also collect gender, interests, mail preferences etc.

This data is invaluable to us, however, the best we can do to identify someone is:

Freebie, who is 26-40 yrs old, lives in Suffolk, is male, prefers text emails, likes computers, the internet, music and sleeping etc.....
(Now come and find me LOL)

We do allow people to select 'unknown' for age and county - in fact it's the default selection, but as we keep it general most people are happy to fill them in (ie 81% for age group).

Just pointing out that you can do lots without taking personally identifiable details.

To answer the original question, we do this in house, and then extract the data from the database for mailing software run locally at newsletter time. I've never trusted the online mailing solutions - so we've never used one.

Going to register anyway though, as has already been pointed out, £35 isn't worth the risk.

Carl

[purple]

We starting this thread as still not got my act together!!

What Age Ranges options people usually use.

[allaffiliatepro]

I've made a mailing list software package that allows you to collect as much information about each user as you like. It also allows you to run multiple lists and subscribers have an admin area where they can select which of your lists they are a member of.

If that sounds like it'll do what you need visit:-
http://www.cosmicperl.com/emailer.html

Ask me any questions you may have.


Lyle