This morning I had a consultant send me an email newsletter about their latest blog post.
Problem is, I unsubscribed from their list over four years ago after they sent multiple duplicate emails with pitches for their latest product.
Reactivating my email account like that is illegal in the US and many other countries. Plus it can be reported to their email service provider and potentially get their account banned.
Email marketing is a powerful way to reach your customers but it has rules that you have to follow. Most of them are common sense and revolve around not lying/deceiving and respecting people's right to have you stop emailing them (permission, consent tracking).
Pretty simple to follow. If you use a quality email sending service, they'll handle much of that for you. (This consultant is using a bad one that has had countless issues with sending to unsubscribed people)
Before sending any marketing type of email to customers, you need to check that those customers gave you permission to email them. In Shopify itself, they'll track if your customers gave you consent to send them marketing emails. This is the "Email me with news and offers" checkbox in checkout but the text can be changed in your store's language settings.
Most good apps that integrate with Shopify will check that for you but it's worth double-checking. (Repeat Customer Insights includes that in the customer exports so you can set it to your email program of choice)
Send marketing emails. Send them frequently. Just make sure you have permission first.
Eric Davis
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