Can email love survive a three-year gap?

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Here's a classic example from earlier this week illustrating the problems that arise when you see permission as a gift, not a loan.

sample email

For many subscribers to this newsletter, the permission loan expired long before this email arrived.

Sending out a new issue three years after the previous one has all sorts of risks. For example...
  • I may have forgotten I ever signed up to the newsletter so I mark you as spam
  • My interests may have changed. I may just delete the email, take the trouble to unsubscribe...or mark you as spam.
  • The email account fell into disuse and was closed. Since the address no longer exists, the webmail service assumes any email to this dead account must be from a spammer and treats your other emails accordingly.
So is there a safe way of reactivating an old list like this?

There is no safe way. But there are safer ways than blithely sending out a normal email with a brief acknowledgment of the sending delay.

The MailChimp blog has some advice from a while back. Fortunately, blog posts don't age as fast as permission:

Sending Your First Campaign To An Old Email List?
Reclaim Old Customer Emails (example)

Do you have any recommendations on how to reactivate a stale address list, but avoid the wrath of the anti-spam Gods?

More on permission | Tags: , ,

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
Permalink | March 19, 2008 | 3 comment(s)
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3 Comments:

Mark -

My thoughts. A 3-year hiatus between email communications is about 2 1/2 years too long. I respectfully disagree with your statement, "There is no safe way." The safe way is to start new. Build your list organically. The risks of sending to an old list of email addresses FAR OUTWEIGH the rewards.

I agree with what Ben of MailChimp wrote in his 2 post about "how to" but still...to me...not worth the risk. As one who thinks about email as his job, Ben does not necessarily represent the average user. Also, we are making the assumption that the email even reached his inbox...that it didn't get blocked at the ISP level, that the email was not a honeypot address, etc.

As Kimberly Snyder of Bronto lore wrote:

Grow Organically - It Is So Worth The Wait: http://blog.bronto.com/2008/01/07/grow-organically-it-is-so-worth-the-wait/

Grow Organically: Market Your Subscription Button: http://blog.bronto.com/2008/02/04/grow-organically-market-your-subscription-button/

Looking forward to some dialogue on this one!

dj at bronto
By Blogger DJ Waldow, on 20 March, 2008  
 

I'm with DJ on this one.

Perhaps in some specialized cases it might be OK to not have regular contact for up to 9-10 months (ex: campaigns for annual events such that, once they're over, the marketer has nothing else relevant to send until next year's event) -- although even in those cases I think there's an argument to be made for adding extra value and staying in touch more often.

But 3 years? If you go one year and your subscribers aren't getting in touch with you to find out why the silence (thus impelling you to pick up emailing again), you simply don't have anything worth saying. It's time for you to go back to square one -- create a brand new campaign and (as illustrated in the Bronto links above) build a new list.

Sorry for the rant, but a 3-year absence is inexcusable, and trying to revive a campaign that's been AWOL that long is a not only a recipe for disaster, but is exactly the type of practice that sullies email's reputation as a communication and marketing medium.
By Anonymous Justin Premick, on 20 March, 2008  
 

Thanks guys. Yep, I think we're all agreed that after three years the safe choice is to start over.

Perhaps then a more pertinent question is, how long can you let the gap between emails grow before it becomes a problem?

An impossible question I guess. I've always used the rule of thumb that any frequency less than once a month is problematical. Not just from a spam/deliverability angle, but simply because too infrequent emails just don't bring enough benefits (excepting special situations or where you have such exceptional content that you can sustain interest and recognition over a long break between emails).

The Irish authorities actually define how long permission lasts. 12 months. Again illustrating that what's "legal" isn't necessarily what makes good marketing practice.
By Blogger Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on 20 March, 2008  
 

Comments closed during migration to a new blog platform in early May