New to this forum and hope this question is appropriate. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit offering free advice to clients. Our service is conducted via email so we collect email addresses from each person we help. Over 10 years we have collected 300K+ email addresses that we have never utilized (beyond each initial transaction). We are making some changes to our program and would like to let these past clients know (and also encourage them to try us out again, if they haven't already). I'm not clear, from reading the CAN-SPAM regulations, whether this would be appropriate/allowable or not? Thanks for any input!
I would recommend you send out a series of 3 emails to the entire list. Email 1 - Explain to them "why" you have their email address and your desire to reconnect with them. Give them an incentive to visit your website and sign-up for your new email list with a double opt-in. Email 2 - Send them one news oriented email about your organization with a reminder of "why" you have their email address, and invite them to join your permanent list. Make sure to tell them there will be only one more follow-up email. (Mention the last email has a special announcement about a contest.) Email 3 - One last email. Remind them one last time "why" you have their email and that it is coming to an end today. Invite them to sign-up for your newsletter for a chance to win a "Fill In Your Prize Here". WARN THEM, there will be no other announcements about this contest or the opportunity to join your list. Final Step - Archive the old list. Quit using it. Award the prize to a randomly selected person who joined your list and include it in your newsletter and press releases you send out to the press. You will probably lose most of your 300,000 users, but the good news is, the ones who signed up for your list actually want to hear from you and will be a responsive live list. Which is better, a 30,000 user list of responsive people, or a 300,000 user list that tags you as spam?
I think ArticleSpecialists has made a good solution. If you don't want to send a series of emails, you can just send one email, but you should tell your contacts at the beginning of your email "why" you have their emails and "why" send them this email. To learn more about CAN-SPAM, you can refer to this article: CAN-SPAM Compliance: What Is CAN-SPAM & Why Does It Matter? http://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-tutorial/can-spam-compliance.aspx
I think that the best thing you can do to stay in compliance with all (US) laws would be to outsource this to an email / newsletter company. I recommend Mandrill http://mandrill.com/ They basically handle the email sending for you, and ensure that it's possible (and easy) to unsubscribe from your mailing list, etc. I've recently signed up with them, and not only do I get many fewer rejections, I can also see how many people opened the email, clicked on what link, etc. Best of all is that it's cheap. (I'm not affiliated with them beyond being a customer).
Can you actually port over a 300,000 list that may not have opted in, and definitely did not double opt-in, and who have not been seeing emails from you? I imagine Mandrill would do the same thing as Aweber, GetResponse, Constant Contact, PureLeverage, and MailChimp, and tell you "No Way, you need to clean up that list first." Which is what my post was about. You need to get the list trimmed down to viable, interested people first.
I would agree that you really need to pair the list down and the method ArticleSpecialists makes a lot of sense. I work for a nonprofit and we are very careful about how we use our clients emails as your reputation is your life's blood. I had a similar experience when I took over as Executive Director of a small nonprofit four years ago. We had a database of 15,000+ email addresses that was never used properly. So we sent out a series of emails explaining how they got on our list, what we were up to now and how we hoped to reconnect with them. We were surprised by some of the feedback we received as some of our former clients thought we had closed shop as they hadn't heard from us in a long long time. True we "lost" 70% of those contacts but since we didn't have a relationship with them we never really had them to begin with. What we did have was a targeted list that was actionable and one that we could leverage for volunteers, donors and supporters who wanted to be part of our mission. It was well worth the effort.
Sure. the idea of "porting over a list" isn't really accurate. You setup mandrill as your smtp server, and use them for sending email. I use it for my forum, sending out 20,000 emails at a pop. They monitor how many people unsubscribe, get bounce messages, etc. Also, the only way to trim down a list is to email them and let some unsubscribe, so you're emailing them either way.
Actually, I'm suggesting they are all currently "unsubscribed" email addresses, since it is unlikely there is any validation of their opt-in for emails. The process I am recommending is to get them to opt-in to a new list so they comply with CAN-SPAM. In your case, you have a list of forum members who opted-in to your list by joining the forum and electing to allow you to send them messages. You have a validation path. Now maybe they can produce the records that show they were give permission to email past clients with promotional messages, but I get the feeling that is not the case. Besides, the odds are very high a large amount of those people are going to start hitting the "SPAM" button since they do not remember giving permission. That just ends up getting you blacklisted and creating all kinds of headaches. I will have to take a look at Mandrill, though. Sounds like a cool tool to have.