With the jewellery industry’s biggest trade show now less than a month away, at least two overseas businesses have been targeting exhibitors at the 2019 IJWF with emails, offering to sell access to visitor lists.
After a number of exhibitors brought the emails to the attention of Expertise Events, the company issued a warning last week, which read: “It has been brought to our attention that some of you may have been approached by companies offering to sell to you our IJWF Visitor/Attendee data.
Please be advised that Expertise Events has never and does not sell any of our lists, and that this is a scam. We would strongly recommend you delete any email offering such information. Please reach out to the team at Expertise Events directly if you are unsure.”
Expertise Events managing director, Gary Fitz-Roy said, “These emails have been around for a long time throughout the entire exhibition, however they have gotten worse in recent times.”
Fitz-Roy said even he has received the emails offering to sell him his own list!
“It’s rubbish, think about it. These companies cannot provide a list of visitors to an event that has not yet taken place,” Fitz-Roy added.
One of the companies offering to sell IJWF visitor information is based in Houston, Texas and describes itself as a ‘database provider’.
According to its website, it “assists small business, medium businesses to large corporations to extend their marketing reach through accurate lists and add important customer contact information to their databases”.
In the email to IJWF exhibitors, the company claimed to have access to an attendees list with more than 5,000 contacts, including their business name, title, phone number, postal address and email address. The package was priced at $950.
The company claims to “guarantee 90 per cent delivery rates” on postal addresses and phone numbers, and “85 per cent deliverability on emails”.
Meanwhile, an email apparently from a representative of a business called ‘Revolusys’ has been circulated to IJWF exhibitors claiming to have 2,000 contacts.
The domain name revolusys.com is for sale and the only company by that name – an IT firm, based in Fort Worth, Texas, appears to be defunct.