Nordstrom (the upscale depart store) suffered a black eye when they commissioned a commercial email campaign that targetted people who had shopped in their stores. They paid Acxiom to match Nordstrom’s customer list with a database of email addresses and then fired off the SPAM campaign. Unfortunately, it blew up in their face. Hopefully this will serve as a cautionary tale for other companies that think using such services is a good idea.