| Hi there, I helped put this guide together and this is totally something we have in mind pretty much all the time (when you tell people you work for an email startup, you're kind of forced to.) But this is actually the kind of email we're trying to prevent. I usually refer to it as "The Other Spam." I've had multiple users of ours talk about how they tried starting newsletters to resurrect dropped users but got more unsubs/spam reports than renewals. Some even got hit up by their ESPs for a spike in spam reports affecting their domain credibility. There should probably be a more prominent section on this, but we do talk about it in our blog a lot. Here's what I usually say: 1) Always have a separate opt-in for product updates, off by default, ideally with some sense of frequency. Failing that, send product updates only to paying/active customers. 2) If you have an onboarding drip campaign, once it runs its course, if they haven't engaged, let them go. 3) From there on, all other communications should pretty much be transactional, sent to the opt-in group, or based on some pre-qualification that the user is still interested. These are all things that we try and make really simple in our product and exercise ourselves. Part of sending better email is just not sending the shitty ones. On the personal side, I also just add tags to my email address when I sign up for something knowing that I'm just poking around so I can easily filter their follow-ups. I also appreciate this from a lead validation angle, because I can filter email addys with a + in them from our funnel metrics. |