[thelist] blacklists and hotmail or comcast

[Bob Meetin]

Joel D Canfield wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Bob Meetin <bobm at dottedi.biz 
> <mailto: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 
The elder 38,000 never got the opportunity to opt-in as the newsletter 
checkbox didn't exist for them. In the db they are "NULL".  They never 
got the opportunity to sign up, so I feel that this is technically SPAM 
to contact them. 

Of the 58000 who were awarded this luxury approximately 11% checked the 
"NO" box.  Retro-applying the math suggests that perhaps 4180 of 38000 
would have opted out.  Applying 66% bounces that drops to around 1400 
valid addresses who would have opted out.

I'd imagine that most won't care and mark as spam as you suggest and 
presenting them an opportunity to read the announcement and sign up or 
forever be left off future mailings is not going to draw the ire of the 
internet spam police, but I can't make that guarantee.

Of course there is always at least one picky a## type to stir up 
trouble.  Risk?

-Bob