[epub] Re: Does permission expire? WAS Re: ezine relaunch

[Sharon Tucci <sharon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:53 PM 9/23/03, Janet Roberts wrote:
> This makes me wonder if permission ever expires without an active 
> unsubscribe, assuming as I said before that you don't change the 
> newsletter so much that it becomes vastly different from what people 
> signed up for originally.

I've now been in email publishing for almost 9 years and in my 7th year of 
offering hosting services. I've had to struggle with the concept of 
expiration of subscription both for my own newsletters as well as in making 
the decision about our company's policies.

I always take a bit of an extremist point of view on things (or so it 
seems!). For years I've expressed the value of the quality of subscribers 
over the quantity of subscribers. Over time, if you do not mail to an 
existing subscriber list, the quality of the list will naturally diminish. 
This isn't just about the issue of permission or about changing email 
addresses, but it's also because people's preferences change over time as 
well.

I use a general rule of thumb that if you haven't published in a year or 
longer, you need to get permission again. There's no reason for picking 
this time frame other than that I needed to make a decision to go with one.

In cases we've had where someone has not published in - sometimes as little 
as 6 months - we've seen as high as a 1% complaint rate. Considering most 
of these subscriptions were confirmed opt-in, this is surprisingly high.

The problem with getting people to re opt-in is that it is highly likely 
your message will get lost for a good chunk of subscribers that may have 
wanted to subscribe. The highest re-sub rate we have seen has been around 
30% and the lowest 0.5%.

> If your sign-up procedure doesn't include an expiration date, can you 
> assume that you can keep emailing people until they tell you to stop? Does 
> an ezine changing its publication frequency constitute breaking an 
agreement?

I think if the frequency is dramatically changed, then you should get 
permission. The same for substantial changes in content. By a dramatic 
change in frequency, I'm referring - for instance - for a weekly going to a 
daily.

> Seems to me as if we're making Denise reinvent the wheel by having her ask 
> subscribers to sign up again. I think she's risking losing people who 
> wouldn't want to be lost but who wouldn't or couldn't act in time. If they 
> opted in once, must they opt in again just because there's been a long 
> delay between issues? Perhaps I've just wildly misinterpreted everyone 
> else on this, but it seems as if that's what we're telling her to do.

I agree with re-opting in entirely. Again, it's about QUALITY of 
subscribers.

One thing that we've seen that will help increase the sign-up rate is by 
sending out a second notice to those who haven't yet subscribed about 7-14 
days after the first one. Usually the second notice gets about 50% of the 
responses of the first one. However, we will only do this with clients who 
have *proof* of the original sign-up.

Sharon Tucci
http://www.ListCast.com - Free trial for up to 200 emails per month!



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