Linked – MailChimp and Others Should Penalize Cold Emails
This caught my interest –
Let’s penalize cold emails.
If a recipient chooses, “I never signed up for this mailing list,” I think MailChimp and other email providers should penalize the sender, too. Maybe not with the voracity they penalize under the “this is spam” response, but if you are cold emailing (sending emails to people without them signing up), then you are at least lacking respect for their time and choice to not be bothered.
First, yes I agree, because it would put an end not only to companies getting email address lists and adding people to their marketing emails, it would also have a side effect that leads to people like me getting a bunch of junk emails currently, because the system does nothing to companies who choose t0 not require double opt-in.
What I mean by that, is right now it is a simple matter to “sign-up” for a service, website, etc. by providing a fake email address. You give the site any address, they give you “x”. But many don’t ever bother to verify that the address you gave, actually belongs to you. So, when you have a relatively common name, and you were on the Gmail bandwagon early enough to have “your name” at gmail.com, everyone else who wants to sign up for something an not be bothered by email, just uses that address.
I’ve long considered creating a list of companies who’s email list I was added to whom I’ve never had any interaction with. Maybe it’s time to shame them, or maybe the email services can do it for me.
