I received an email from a forum inviting me to join. I watched that forum go from 10 members to over 200 in one day due to those emails. I was wondering, is it SPAM if I sent out ONE email to a large list of people inviting them to my forum? If not, how do I obtain targeted email lists? People who would actually WANT to know about my site.
It depends on your target audience, we have lists available, let me know if you are interested. Thanks
It is illegal. Even buying lists is illegal in most cases. To make it legal people should allow you to send them emails (I mean allow the specific site we are talking about)
blasting to purchased lists will simply damage your sender reputation, and put your forum in a bad light, even if you get a few registrants You're better to go with viral marketing
Wrong, there are ways to get around this very easily without even spamming the person. All you have to do is either take over someone email list, that is in a certain category, for example, lets say someone signed up for a newsletter about a certain category we will talk about education. This person would like education emails, If you sell your list to a person, they will be taking over the email list, and you will not be using it any longer, All of there emails will be in the category education. That is basically what my new site will be doing, is buying peoples email lists, then taking over the email lists, having custom news letters written every week and sent out So, if you would like to do this, you need to either use a service, like what the one person was pointing out above, and he will send out a email to a targeted group what ever your forums topic may be. Or, buy a mailing list, within a certain category, and have them agree to the terms that they will no longer use that emailig list and you will keep the same category that they had. You cannot buy a email lists from a site, that has newsletters about there site tho, Just if they would like to recieve emails about certain things. Hope this helps you out And Good Luck!
The definition of SPAM (according to the Can-SPAM act) is: unsolicited bulk email. You can send bulk email to those who've opted in or "solicited" your response and it isn't considered SPAM. When you work with a reputable email provider, they'll know all the laws and will have opt in data to back up any complaints.
Thanks for all of your replies everyone!! I am not sure if I am going to persure this route. I'm not sure it's my speed- but I appreciate all of the input!!!
Here is a leagal way of doing this! Find article and news websites that are related to the subject of your forum and have a large email list of subscribers. They are looking for content all the time anyways so you can submit something about your site to them. Those people actually subscribed because they are interested so it is perfect!