Avoiding email spam...

[EdwardD]

Hi everyone - this is an amazing forum. I'm glad I was able to find it so that I could get a feel for DA before making a purchase.

Off-topic question, but it seems like this is a group that might be able to help. My marketing department recently set up an account with Constant Contact and added the email addresses of all of our clients so that they could send out a newsletter. They've been tracking responses and are getting a 50% open rate, but this month they noticed that one person marked them as spam.

These are all active customers, and have given us their contact information previously. Is it really OK to just add them to an email list for the newsletters, or do we have to ask permission again since this is a new use for their address? They're only sending informative newsletters about the programs - not spam or sales pages.

What do you think? I'm not in the marketing department, so I wasn't really sure, but it seems to me like they might be crossing some sort of technical line. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have.

Thanks,
Ed

 

[nobaloney]

If you don't use double opt-in then you WILL have some of your recipients reporting you as spam. If you send email through your own server you may (probably will) get blocklisted. If you use a third party, such as Constant Contact, depending on their terms of service you may violate their terms of service.

What we recommend to our clients (and what you should probably do), is create two separate lists. The first list should contain the email addresses of ALL your clients, and be used only for emergency contact, billing, etc. Every email sent to this list should start with a paragraph stating something like:

You are receiving this email because we need to contact you concerning your account. To remove yourself from this list you should unsubscribe from our services.

The second list should a voluntary list. Really you shouldn't even mail once to all your clients to ask them if they want to be on this list, but rather put a link to subscribe in your other emails (your first list [but not as the only topic], bills, announcements, etc.). Once people subscribe to this list you should send them one email asking them if they really want to be on the list (you can set this up with Constant Contact), and only if they respond yes, put them on your second list.

Doing it any other way will eventually get you labelled as a spammer.

Jeff