Emailing Clients: Who Can I Email?

When clients start out on their mortgage email newsletter or real estate email newsletter, they’re excited! They want this awesome new email newsletter to go to everybody and anybody. If you breathe and have an email address, you’re the new target!

That being said, email can be a tricky business. With CAN-SPAM in the mix, we have to be extra careful we’re not getting anyone in trouble (you or us) with our emailing practices. So, we’d like to take a minute to remind you about the laws and what is and is not appropriate.

A Couple Things to Keep In Mind About Email Lists

They must comply with CAN-SPAM laws. Many of our clients simply copy and paste their entire database and send it to us. Unfortunately, federal law requires one of two things happen in order for you to send “commercial emails” to someone: 

• They must have closed a (home or loan) with you in the last 2 years, OR
• They must have given you explicit permission to contact them via email for marketing purposes.

Separate Your Lists and Reintroduce Yourself

Because of this, we suggest sending two lists our way:

1. The first is a list of all clients with whom you’ve closed a (home or loan) in the past 2 years.
2. The second list is everyone else you’d like to email.

Those in the first list we can add and start emailing immediately. For the latter list of people, we’ll send them a quick email that re-introduces you, tells them you’d like to stay up-to-date with them via email, and tells them if they’d like to keep receiving valuable emails from you, to click a link and they’ll be subscribed. If they don’t, that’s fine, too. They’ll never get commercial emails from us.

This is a great approach for 2 reasons:

1. It keeps your list healthy and your account in the clear.
2. It makes sure that we’re only sending emails to people who want to see them. Your campaign reports will have above-average open and view rates because of this!

Of course, you’re always welcome to simply attest to us that the list you provide already complies with one of the two aforementioned requirements, or you can sort your list yourself then send it over and tell us it’s good to go! That being said, don’t lie! It could result in our email provider suspending or even closing your account. Ouch!