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

[Janet Roberts <janet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi  everybody:

I'm late chiming in on this issue, but I'm interested because I am going to 
be relaunching an ezine in the next month, and it hadn't occurred to me to 
ask people to resubscribe, because I assumed that once they give 
permission, and as long as I don't change the newsletter's focus, the 
permission is good until they withdraw it (as in unsubscribing).

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.

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?

What I was planning to do was to send out a brief relaunch issue that 
followed my basic format, but including an editor's note at the beginning 
explaining that I was offline for a time and reminding people that they're 
getting the newsletter because they signed up for it, and pointing them 
toward the unsubscribe if they have changed their minds in the meantime. 
Before I send it, I'm going to set my mailing-list software to unsub 
everyone whose address bounced because it was invalid, and then go back to 
see where I am.

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 understand about worrying about spam, but are we creating more damage by 
dumping an entire database when one a handful might complain? Yeah, I know, 
a handful can still do damage. But I'm assessing the risk here. I assume 
that everyone on Denise's list wanted to be there, that she didn't spam or 
use a bogus co-reg to build her list. I built my list that way, and since I 
use private administrator approval to grant final access to my list, I'm 
assuming everybody on my list asked to be there.

So, I think that if she sends her opt-in list a mailing, and a few people 
have changed their minds over time, it's legitimate to ask them to opt out 
rather than ask everybody else to opt in a second time.

What do you all think?

Janet



3:20 PM 9/22/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> Hi, Everyone ...
>
> I just wanted to thank everyone for your response to my question about
> relaunching my ezine and my concern about being accused of spam (since it 
> has been
> over a year since my subscribers have received an issue).
>
> I know asking subscribers to re-sign up for my ezine is probably the best
> direction  to go to protect myself.  At the same time, I still feel 
> disheartened
> after having spent so much time to build a subscriber base of 1,000, to 
> know I
> may have to start from scratch.



        Please support our sponsor: EmailUniverse.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
--> Get the Best Minds in the Business for under $1000! <--

Put your email-publishing product or service where 25,000+ pros 
 in e-publishing and e-marketing will see it with a flexible
    ad package on the EmailUniverse.com Resource Network. 
    Make CONTACT, Build INFLUENCE or Get MAXIMUM IMPACT.
     Enlist EmailUniverse.com in your next ad campaign!
      http://opt-influence.com/nl/pl.cgi?emailuniverse
-----------------------------------------------------------------