Legal Marketing & PR

Stop Using Purchased Email Lists!

By peteboyd

Before you can send any email-marketing material, you must have permission from every single one of your recipients. If your initial reaction to that statement was, “but what if…,” then stop what you’re doing, because you don’t have permission.  [Mail Chimp - Rookie Mistakes Guide].

Purchased lists are not permission lists.  I have seen campaigns fail to send because a client has purchased their list.  We spend time drafting great copy; putting together a great design, testing, more testing, and then the email cannot be sent because the list is purchased.  So we always ask that first now.  Where did you get your list?

There are definite sanctions if it is not permission based.

1.  Federal CAN-SPAM Act

The United States federal CAN-SPAM Act became law on January 1, 2004. According to their website, the FTC says that if you violate the law, you could be fined $16,000 for each offense (multiply $16,000 times the number of people on your recipient list). Yikes, that can get expensive quickly.  ISPs around the country have already successfully sued spammers for millions and millions of dollars under this law.  Here is a review of the law from the FTC.

Because that it is law, all major email marketing companies like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Campaign Monitor require your list to be permission based – usually double opt-in to send from their networks.  A double opt-in list means they agreed to sign up to your list from your web site and also clicked on a verification email link that you sent them.

We have had clients purchase lists, not tell us where they get them from, and we upload the list to the mailing company to send.  Lo and behold the list is rejected on the first send, because they are not opt-in.  This includes purchased lists from the Florida Bar and all other bar associations.  Sure they may have opted-in to the Bar, but not to your list.

Using purchased lists just wastes a bunch of time and money.  I am just advising to be aware of this requirement.  I will say that sometimes small campaigns can sneak under the radar.  But bottom line, if it is not permission based, you are in violation of Federal law.

2.  Potential Blacklist of your IP address.

Let’s say you skip the email marketing companies sending platform because of their pesky permission requirements and send it yourself.  If you send this from your own computer network, you may end up on spam blacklists like spamhaus.org.  All it takes to get on a blacklist is for you to be reported a few times to the right people.

If you get on a blacklist, then legitimate clients will not be able to receive your email, it is blocked or goes into junk mail.  This I have seen a lot.  It creates havoc in trying to run your business.  Your IT person is also going to hate you, as it is very hard to get off the list.  It almost always requires that you move email servers to a new IP range – more time and money.

Full post as published by PaperStreet Web Design: SpeakOut on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).