Ethics of capturing customer emails?

[Bookmark]

I know I can download a spreadsheet of (some) customer emails, but is it legit to add them to my marketing list without their permission?   Some of us at the store say "sure, why not -- they can opt out if they want to " and others say "no, people should actively sign up for emails before we add them to the list" -- is there some concensus?

[Candlestore · Accepted solution]

If the person GIVES me their email I let them know that we have a newsletter we send out usually 2 times a month.  If their email is auto generated by other means from a transaction and their email just appears then I do not add them to a mailing list.  Some people are getting TOO much Spam and advertisements in their email and especially now with businesses looking for sales, I get a ton of ads daily and now with the election I seem to get candidates sending me stuff too.  Most of my emails are ads, and its time consuming to go through them all to get to the emails I need like business related questions or something that is important.  So in my opinion I would not just add someone to your email list people they may think you sold it to someone else if they start getting other forms of Spam too.

So my two cents is maybe have a form in store or on your website to let people sign up to get informed of events or sales you are having.