fishnet Posted August 2, 2004 Share Posted August 2, 2004 Hi, A help design and run an e-commerce site which is recently in the process of being redesigned. As part of the re-launch process the customer wants us to send out an email to all their customers. This email will be a one-off 'The site has been redesigned and all these new features have been added... etc' type email.' My question is, what is the best way of going about this? We already have permission to send emails to these customers due to the terms and conditions which were accepted during their previous purchases, but I would rather not antaganise people too much. The site has been running for 3 years and we have never sent an email like this before ( and probably won't again until the next re-design ). The emails will be sent from the websites server (which will accept mail back) from a genuine address (already used in purchase confirmations). It will also contain both text/plain and text/html version of the message along with embedded graphics. There will be a mailto: type unsubscribe link as well as a http: version. (Both working) The user can also change their preferences online to never receive these advertising emails again. There will also be a working telephone number for questions in both the email and on the website. Questions / comments ? We are in the UK. Regards Ian -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted August 2, 2004 Share Posted August 2, 2004 Suggest you take a look at the Pinned item that will then send you to a FAQ in progress 'here' ... in the FAQ you'll find a link or two that talks about running a mailing list. That you've not sent any e-mail in a few years, it's a sure thing that you're going to get complaints. That you say this first e-mail is going to include graphics, advertising, and a message of the great things going on, you are going to be receiving a lot of complaints. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevenUnderwood Posted August 2, 2004 Share Posted August 2, 2004 And at the very least, contact your email provider (the person who will get the complaints) to give them a heads up and possibly get some further pointers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishnet Posted August 2, 2004 Author Share Posted August 2, 2004 And at the very least, contact your email provider (the person who will get the complaints) to give them a heads up and possibly get some further pointers. 14473[/snapback] Hi, Thanks for the responses. As well as being the designers we are also the hosting/ email/ dns providers as well. We use DNS based blacklists on all of our customers/internal mail as well as bayesian filtering on our own. This email though, will be sent from the customers server ( nothing else on this machine apart from their site). If it does end up in a list, then it *shouldn't* affect anyone else. If I'm wrong please let me know ! Ian -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlyn Posted August 2, 2004 Share Posted August 2, 2004 Not unless you end up in Spamhaus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishnet Posted August 2, 2004 Author Share Posted August 2, 2004 Not unless you end up in Spamhaus. 14479[/snapback] Do spamhaus automatically block class-C's ? I thought they only blocked an IP address. Ian -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlyn Posted August 2, 2004 Share Posted August 2, 2004 Spamhaus block entire ranges belonging to a spammer no matter how large. So does SPEWS. If you get into SPEWS it will not be just you but your provider. We will not get into a discussion on SPEWS here. That is what NANAE is for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Betsy Posted August 2, 2004 Share Posted August 2, 2004 If you did not explicitly give your customers a box to check (or uncheck) as an ok to email them with additional offers, promotions, etc., then you do not have permission to email them. (which you may not have since that standard is probably more recent than three years). If it has been a number of years, many of your addresses will not be valid and some may have new owners - who will rightfully think you are sending unsolicited email. The best thing to do, IMHO, is to send a confirmation email (no advertising) to your list and see how many you get back. (Someone else might advise you on whether you could give the reason that you have redesigned the web page as the reason for sending the confirmation email - IMHO, an accurate explanation of what you are trying to do would be acceptable.) Then have a check box for people to say whether or not they want emails from you on the page where they enter their email address and start a confirmed subscription list. And send at least one email per month so that people don't forget that they signed up. There have been some diligent, knowledgeable reporters who have missed an email from someone who had not emailed them for months and reported it. Just think how many careless reports you might get?! Miss Betsy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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