What's your take on this re privacy issues?

Hi all

We run www.energyreview.net, a news service for the energy industry.

People find us by various means and the usual way into a subscription is to take a 1 month free trial of the service. At the end of the trial period, if there's a phone number to call, we call them, otherwise it's an email conversation.

Now, we try to capture as much information as we can about someone who signs up for a trial. If they come from Google, say, then we are able to capture precisely what it was they were looking for when they found us. Seems to me to be highly valuable information.

Here's the thing - we're then able to contact someone and say "we know that you found us by looking for blah blah blah on Google. Let us help you find more on that topic in our archives". It's just responding to a precise need - the essence of selling.

Now one of a number of things can happen here, but here's two of them:

They can say "hey great, thanks for the help", and may or may not sigh up for the service.

or

Some may say "how dare you record this information". Now I happen to think that there are quite a few privacy-issue complainers out there who need to get a life, but it is BOUND to upset some!

So what to do - use it or not?

Looking forward to any responses.

Thanks

Philip


EnergyReview.net