I think I’m going to write a post about this real quick.
]]>Brilliant! Do what they say.
]]>This was MailChimp’s response to the same Q, Please let me know what u think:
Thanks for reaching out to us today!
Email addresses go stale really fast. When someone opts in to your list, you?ve probably got 3 months before their permission goes cold and about 6 months before the email address is bad. Wait too long before emailing them, and you?ll not only get tons of bounces – you?re going to get some really nasty spam complaints.
It?s not that hard for recipients to report you either. They just click a little “this is spam” button, and that sends an automatic email to their ISP (referred to as a feedback loop). If enough of these pile up at the ISP, your emails will be blocked from then on. Read more about feedback loops here.
So, if you?ve been collecting emails for a few years and are only just now getting around to emailing them, you need to re-invite them to your list. Send a quick email asking people if they still want to be on your list. Ask them to click a link to confirm. If they don?t respond, take them off the list. They obviously don?t want to hear from you. If your lists are small enough (less than 500), you can do this same process using gmail or outlook.
We have a really great guide that will talk about how to reconfirm your list, check it out:
How do I reconfirm my list?: http://eepurl.com/ec01T
Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.
Have a great day!
Cool. Thanks for the quick reply.
]]>Sammy: That’s totally fine to do. I prefer having people “opt in” rather than “opt out” but it’s completely fine to do that.
]]>What I’m saying is that you don’t have permission to add people to a bulk email list, but you can keep their names in your database for future reference.
]]>Elana: I appreciate this info. It makes sense and is very helpful. I’ll keep an eye out.
]]>Hi Alyson,
Yes, you can send postcards to galleries since they are considered organizations not individuals. The rules around privacy that I mentioned are to protect the privacy of an individual. Where it gets interesting is when the personal information is used by an individual for their business. For example, the email address that I use for my business as an artist although may be considered personal information in some circumstances, is business information with respect to my art business. Someone from the privacy commissioner’s office would have to give the final ruling on this, but I have been viewing it that if you have chosen to use the information for your business, that it is no longer personal information – especially if the individual is publishing the information on web pages and other places in the internet.