Seth Godin had a post yesterday about sending personal email. His post lists 14 ways to do that. I want to focus on the last one: “Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you have the right to email them.”
As Seth often says, people want personal, relevant email (and messages) not spam. I was talking to someone recently who said, “I’ve got several hundred email addresses and I’d like to send messages to those people. I got the email addresses because I was bcc’d on messages they received from other people. Can I email to them?”
In a word, NO.
They don’t know you, they haven’t given you permission, and you will be seen as a spammer. Same thing applies to email lists you “inherit” from a company that went out of business (unless you bought the company and the list, and the people on that list know it), names you take off of Web sites, or an email list you buy.
Without permission, you’re a spammer. Plain and simple.
The penalties are severe too; up to $11,000 per violation.
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