The WordPress marketing blog recently reported that 92 percent of Millennial consumers are more likely to buy products from “ethical companies.“ What exactly is an ethical company?

An ethical company is one that makes decisions based on business principles, or whether it will result in a profit, as well as moral principles — whether it’s the right thing to do. For some companies, this can mean buying inputs that are produced in a sustainable way, or giving a percentage of their revenues or products to charities.

But it also means treating customers ethically, and that includes treating their contact information with integrity.

Information: today’s most valuable asset

The information that you have about the people in your contact or subscriber list is valuable — not just to you, but to any organization. Companies spend millions to acquire contact information for the people in their target audiences: physical and email addresses and phone numbers are gold. And as shopping, banking and just about every all kinds of transactions are increasingly moving onto mobile devices, mobile numbers are becoming even more valuable.

But in the current age of computer hacking, social media manipulation and other scandals, people are getting more wary of giving organizations their personal information. If they’re going to do it, they have to believe two things:

• that they’ll get something equally valuable in return, and
• you won’t abuse their trust by flooding their inboxes with information they don’t want, or giving or selling your information to anyone else.

In short, that you’ll act ethically.

In the next blog, we’ll look at some techniques that organizations can follow to use SMS text messaging ethically, responsibly and profitably.