How to legitimately ask for email unsubscribe?

[HalfACalf]

I've been poring over the CAN-SPAM Act and the rest of that stuff, and it seems that in the USA it is legal to send someone an unsolicited email as long as there is a big-ass UNSUBSCRIBE link and you honor that if they click it. So far so good. My problem is that I can't find an email service provider that will let me send a list that isn't clean. So if I exceed a certain percentage of hard bounces through bad addresses, they'll ban me. GoDaddy seems to be the most lax of all but even they say that if you hit 10% you're gone. I have a list of about 60K email addresses that are all targeted in a particular industry and I'm proposing an industry-specific newsletter, so it isn't "really spam" and all I'm doing is asking them to stay on or hit the UNSUBSCRIBE link, at which point they're off the list immediately. Is there any email service provider out there that will let me send out that list without fearing going over 10% hard bounces?

 

[upl8t]

What you're doing is still spam. UCE ( unsolicited commercial email ). If the recipient didn't ask for it it's defined as spam. You're not going to find major players in the U.S. who will allow you to mail like that. There use to be an email section here with guys that know what they're doing. Some of them are hanging around on the BlackhatWorld IRC. You might want to hop in there and connect with them. There are ways to do it but what you want to do carries huge risks.

 

[HalfACalf]

Nope... I don't wanna do anything that has "huge risks" attached to it. Life is too short for that. But the way this is set up seems like a Catch22. You have to get permission to send email but you can't email anyone to get permission. So is social networking and SEO the only way to drive people legitimately to an email subscription form or are there other legitimate or at least semi-legitimate ways that won't land the Feds on your front door?

 

[upl8t]

The problem is that everyone thinks that their product or service is special. So if everyone mails to all the potential prospects they can get their hands on, our mail boxes get filled up and the whole system grinds to a halt. That is what was happening and why it had to be stopped. There were major mailers dropping 50 million or more pieces per day.

Now you have to find other social/viral ways of making it interesting to get people to your signup form. Use an email signup form that integrated to one of the list managers. It's a double opt-in process and do your emails through them. They take care of the unsubscribes and manage the list for you. PLUS....big bonus....they're "white listed" so the emails get into the inbox and not the spam folder. Even if you could mail your emails would probably end up in the spam folder.

 

[HalfACalf]

I see exactly what you're saying and you're absolutely correct. It just breaks my heart to see this list of 60K superjuicy email addresses ready to be plucked and to leave them on the table while I try to re-obtain them one by one like pulling teeth through LinkedIn and other "motivations" to visit the opt-in form. Does it make any difference that these are all members of various industry associations that I'm also a member of? Does the "common membership" constitute a "pre-existing business relationship" or am I just grasping at straws (which I think I am!)

 

[mouthpaw]

Now you have to find other social/viral ways of making it interesting to get people to your signup form.

There are many creative ways of capturing "subscribes" being discussed here and on many aff marketing blogs (too tired to find them right now).

The gist is you get them to send you an email. That's it. They're subscribed. Foggy? Yes. But then, so is can-spam. For example, can you show me where in can-spam it says your recipients must have opted in?

CAN-SPAM Act is an opt-out approach to spam. The law requires businesses to stop sending e-mails to those who request to be removed from a list. This requires a functioning reply address or e-mail unsubscribe system that operates for at least 30 days after your last mass e-mailing (Sec. 5(3)). In addition, you must include your postal address and a clear indication that the e-mail includes a solicitation, unless you have "prior affirmative assent" from the recipient (Sec. 5(a)(5))."

So you just have to say somewhere in the message that it's an ad. On the other hand, perhaps the message is not truly "transactional" in nature. Maybe your intent is more "relational".

From Can-Spam: "If the message contains only commercial content, its primary purpose is commercial and it must comply with the requirements of CAM-SPAM. If it contains only transactional or relationship content, its primary purpose is transactional or relationship. In that case, it may not contain false or misleading routing information, but is otherwise exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act."

So perhaps you're sending the message to offer tips. And you just happen to mention an offer, but that's not the primary purpose of the message. Etc etc etc...

Pretty loose law here, yes. Pretty stiff penalties, also true. Just gotta do your research an go with what you're comfortable with.

 

[mouthpaw]

And as if BHW were listening in and helping to prove the point, there was a message waiting for me this morning from "....The BEST In The WORLD Breaks SILENCE...Be a MILLIONAIRE. ..." <[email protected]> sent to the unique address that I used to sign up here (and for only that porpoise).

(don't ban me!)