How strict is the CAN-SPAM law? Need some help.

I bought some targeted email lists on fiverr and want to send just one email to everyone in the list. I won't be sending out emails about viagra or emails with weird non-English words made from a computer. It'll be a genuine email people MIGHT be interested in, maybe. I'm aware many of the emails in the list may no longer work. I was going to use mailchimp, but then I read on the net that if I get caught spamming I could pay something like $1600 per email. I'm hoping that's for the big guys and not enforced very often, but I'm never sent email in bulk before so I have no idea and it scared me.

I have two websites I want to promote.

One for a health drink. I plan to email snippets of the latest posts from my health blog to everyone making it look the same as a feedburner email list coming from an rss feed. On the blog I'll have two affiliate ads on the upper right corner, no adsense ads will be listed.

The second will be for my (as of now free) classifieds site in a niche of condos. I'll email the list of agents a screen shot of how it's number one when googling two words together and mention that it's free. It's free now, a year later I'll add small fee to list a classified.

I have a few questions:

How important is it so provide the true personal info on mailchimp?

How often do people get fined $1600 per email sent?

Would I fall into the spammer category and possibly have to pay this fine?

thanks a lot,
ph222

I also tested the two emails I want to send and they had no problem making it in my gmail and yahoo inboxes.

If you give them a way to opt-out and you really remove people that ask for it from you list, it should be ok.

About the inbox, it's sure than 2 test emails have big chances to go into it... It may be different when you will have sent a big batch.

ph222 said:

I also tested the two emails I want to send and they had no problem making it in my gmail and yahoo inboxes.

Click to expand...

Of course, those two emails were viewed just like they were normal every day emails....BUT as soon as you start cranking them out the spam filters realize what you're doing and you're black listed. Down you go into the spam folder and your mailing is dead in the water.

I have an idea. I'll make a Google groups account. "Invite" everyone to the group who is in my list. Then I'll write what I want in my description. If they join I'll have something even better. If nobody joins, then at least I'll get my message to their inbox. Could this work?