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Avoid $50,000 fines while building your email list
Caught a guy on Threads suggesting this, and it’s worth mentioning here because…
If you do this you could get slapped with a $51,744 fine.
Not just once…
But for every single person you send a marketing related email to in this fashion.
He said, and I quote:
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“Today I learned you already have a mailing list if you've ever used gmail. I used AI to clean out all the businesses got a solid 1k emails of people I've actually talked to before. Just hit the contacts link in gmail and you can export all the info to a csv. I still am going to review each one to make sure I want them on there haha. My primary care dr gets a email "Yo fam new record out now on Spotify".
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Now, the part about getting fined?
As far as I know, it’s rarely enforced.
But that’s not the real point here. The real point is, you could get your bulk email account shut down, flagged for complaints, wind up on blacklists, and apparently, much, much worse.
But then there’s the ethical question…
Would you want someone grabbing your email just because you exchanged a message once and then blasting you with Spotify links? Probably not.
There’s a much smarter way to do this instead.
Like sending a friendly message, “Hey fam, starting a newsletter about XYZ, thought of you, if you want in let me know, if not no worries, won’t bug you about it again.”
Nothing wrong with a little warm outreach to your existing network.
But if you’d rather build an email list of people who intentionally seek you out and subscribe, and who are by some rough statistical approximations 10-15x times more likely to buy…
Then consider checking my new Viral Storytelling Guide (totally free) using the link below:
Kevin Hood