Following some suggestions and requests, Not-for-profit recently commenced a monthly newsletter. One of the questions that we asked was how widely we should go in adding email addresses to the distribution.
We get a large amount of spam and know how much time it takes to weed out and delete (our experience with spam filters has not always been a good one, losing a number of precious emails to over-enthusiastic filters). So we took a cautious approach, only adding those who have contacted NFP for advice, or who we have assisted in various ways, or who we know personally and who agreed to be subscribed. The list has been very slowly growing as people have subscribed through the website.
We were careful to follow good practice and include an ‘unsubscribe’ link in the newsletters along with our address etc., and to faithfully honour requests to unsubscribe. To date, unsubscriptions have been very low, and we have thankfully received no complaints. As we were preparing the first newsletter and associated mailing list DIA Charities Services published a very useful blog entitled “What charities need to know about spam”
It contains a lot of good information for those considering publishing a newsletter or sending out email information and we commend it to you.