Privacy policy
Who we are
This policy explains how Membership Gap, a service of Internet Physics, Inc., a Delaware corporation (Delaware file number 10348328), collects and uses personal information. "We" means Internet Physics, Inc. acting under the name Membership Gap.
What we collect and where it comes from
People we contact
We collect only business contact information: a person's name, job title, business email address and the company they work for. We contact people only in their business role. Every email we send names Membership Gap as the sender, gives our postal address and lets you opt out.
We find the associations we write to, and their directors of membership, in the public member and partner directories of the state, regional and international societies of association executives in the Association Leadership Coalition, and on each association's own public staff page. We read each association's published entry dues and staff size from its own public pages.
The free gap finding
The free gap finding uses public information about the association's field, not about its people: the association's public member directory, one public list of firms or practitioners in its field (a state licence roll, a public industry directory, a trade-show exhibitor list or a ranked industry list) and each named firm's public website or contact page. It names firms, not people. Where a field list is a roll of individual practitioners, a name on it may be personal information; we use it only to count and name non-members in the finding, and it comes from the public list itself.
Customers
An association that orders gives us the name, title and business email of its executive director and its membership staff; its current member export, including members hidden from its public directory; its do-not-contact list; if it wants, the firms already in its own recruitment pipeline; its approved email template, member-benefit FAQ and online join link; and, each month, a new-member report from its membership system with each new member's firm, member category, join date, first-year dues paid and date paid. Customers pay our emailed invoices by bank transfer (ACH or wire).
Emails and our website
We keep the emails people send to hello@membershipgap.com and our replies, because they are the record of what we agreed.
Our website at https://membershipgap.com is a set of static pages. It has no login, no forms and no advertising or analytics trackers, and it sets no cookies of its own. The provider that serves it may log technical data, such as IP addresses, to keep it running and secure.
Information we handle for customers
When we work for a customer, the personal information we handle on its behalf belongs to the customer. We use it only to do the work the customer ordered and as the customer instructs. We do not sell it or use it for anything else, and we delete it within 90 days after the work ends unless the customer asks us to return it first.
For an association's Member recruitment campaign, this is:
- Its member export and pipeline list (names, firms and business emails of its members and of the firms it is already recruiting). We use them only to remove those firms and people from every wave and as the baseline that is never billed.
- Its do-not-contact list. We apply it, with our suppression list, before every wave. Each opt-out from our recruitment emails is added to both within 10 business days.
- Its new-member reports. We match them against our gap list, the baseline, our reply threads and our coded-link log, only to show which joins are billable under the order, and we send the matched list back to the association.
- The firms and people on its gap list we email in its name, their replies, and the record of each visit to its join page through our coded link (the firm's token and the date). We use them only for that association's campaign and its attribution. We pass member-benefit questions, with the thread, to the association's membership staff.
We never sell this information, use one association's member export, lists or reports for another customer, or email anyone outside the association's instructions. We keep the member export, the pipeline list, the do-not-contact list and the reports until the last 6-month attribution window of the order ends, which is when the work ends for them, and then delete them. Opt-outs stay on our suppression list as "How long we keep it" describes.
How we use information
We use personal information to decide whom to contact and to write to them about Membership Gap; to prepare the free gap finding and do ordered work; to answer emails and keep records of what was agreed, including consents to automatic renewal; to honour opt-outs and the requests this policy describes; and to meet legal obligations. We do not sell personal information, share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, or use it to make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on a person.
Who we share it with
We share personal information only with service providers that process it for us (our email provider, our email sending tool, our domain and web hosting providers, and the software providers we use to read and write our emails and prepare our work); with a customer, when the information concerns that customer's own work; and where the law requires it. We do not sell or rent it.
We also use an email address verification service, which checks each business email address before we send to it.
We also receive customers' bank transfers through our bank, which sees the payer's name and account details that come with each transfer.
How long we keep it
We keep business contact information about people we have contacted for up to 24 months after we last contacted them, and then delete it. We keep customer records and emails for as long as the customer relationship lasts and for 3 years after it ends, so that we can show what was agreed. If you opt out or ask us to delete your information, we keep only your email address and the date on our do-not-contact list, so that we never contact you again.
Your choices and rights
Opting out. Reply "unsubscribe" to any email from us and we will not email you about Membership Gap again. We act on opt-outs within 2 business days.
Access, correction and deletion. Anyone may ask us what personal information we hold about them, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, by emailing hello@membershipgap.com with the subject "Access", "Correct" or "Delete" from the address concerned. We reply by email within 30 days. When we delete, we remove the information from our mailbox, our sending tool and our files within 30 days and confirm by email, keeping only the do-not-contact entry described above. We do not treat anyone differently for using these rights.
Security
We store personal information only with the kinds of service providers this policy names and in our own files, and we give access only to the providers that need it for the purposes above. No method of storing or sending information is completely secure.
Children
Membership Gap serves businesses. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy by publishing a new version on this page with a new effective date. If a change affects how we use information we already hold about our customers, we email them before it applies.
Contact
Membership Gap, a service of Internet Physics, Inc.
Email: hello@membershipgap.com