The Direct Marketing Association plans to cease including home address information as part of its Telephone Preference Service list, a telemarketing do-not-call list the organization distributes to its membership.
The DMA will continue to collect addresses from consumers who sign up for the list and keep the information in its own records, said DMA spokesman Louis Mastria, who added that direct marketers don't need the information.
“There's no need to send them,” he said. “So why send them?”
Mastria said the DMA planned to make the change in the near future. According to a notice obtained by DM News, the change of content will begin with the Telephone Preference Service file that will be distributed in July.
One telemarketer who requested anonymity said she was worried that not distributing address information would reduce the effectiveness of the Telephone Preference Service. The change will cause problems particularly for telemarketers who don't organize their calling and DNC lists by telephone number, as may be the case with older systems, she said.
She said removing the addresses could undermine the DMA's stance against government-run DNC lists. Because government lists, including state lists and the proposed Federal Trade Commission national DNC list, contain telephone numbers only, they tend to be less accurate than the Telephone Preference Service, which the DMA has argued is better and preferable, she said.
Mastria said the DMA would do its own cleaning of the Telephone Preference Service list to ensure accuracy and make corrections when consumers switch addresses and phone numbers. Telemarketers who use the list shouldn't have to worry, he said.
“We're going to be checking them here,” Mastria said. “It's something we feel we can handle on this end.”
Randy Lenzen, vice president of the Allant Group, Naperville, IL, said that most telemarketers organize their in-house DNC and calling lists by phone number, anyway. Phone numbers provide telemarketers a 10-digit numeric identifier and have proven to be the most effective way to keep track of consumers, he said.
“We don't see much of an effect,” Lenzen said of the change.
