[thelist] blacklists and hotmail or comcast

[Joel D Canfield]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Bob Meetin <bobm at dottedi.biz> wrote:

> Philosophically speaking, is there an ethical way to contact the still
> valid members of the elder 38000 or so and offer them an opportunity to sign
> up without leading to catastrophic consequences?


*philosophically*, if they opted in at some point, and have just fallen off
your client's radar, but not opted out, a single email asking "would you
like to pick up where we left off?" feels perfectly valid to me.

technically, it'll probably turn into 66% bounces, and 66% of the rest will
mark it spam. I made those numbers up.

a single mass spammage like that (meaning, the recipients calling it spam,
not that it really is, in my fairly aggressively anti-spam opinion) isn't
likely to get anything but a warning from a mailing list tool like Constant
Contact or Campaign Monitor.

but, if you've got your CAN/SPAM and technical ducks in a row,
philosophically, a single email to those folks offering to reconnect feels
completely fair to me.

joel