I have had a lot of people ask why it's necessary to be so strict with permission. At Innucopia we are very strict with permission, and require that Addemar is used only for sending mails to recipients that have already given permission to receive the correspondence in question. Addemar is for building and maintaining relationships with customers. We believe permission is a matter of respect to your customers, as well as a matter of following best practices that are in place to ensure that your messages continue to be delivered and not blocked.

In our experience there's just no benefit in cutting corners. If you are a legitimate business accused of email spamming and blacklisted, ISPs may choose to block all email from your company, not just bulk. It's not so easy to move your whole company website in that case, plus it's horrible for your brand. Sending out unsolicited bulk email is not illegal as long as the CAN-SPAM guidelines are followed, but companies should seriously consider if it's worth the risk to entertain this strategy. I for one would never do business with a company that sent me unsolicited bulk email for which I did not first provide permission; I know I'm not alone in my distaste for this type of email. And even if you follow all the legal rules, customers can still blacklist you, perhaps because you're mailing them too frequently or otherwise dropping the ball. Companies have to consider not only legalities and best practices, but also the preferences of the customers.

As Bill Nussey put it in The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing, "Permission is the tool that turns prospects into customers, and customers into lifelong customers." And today, TRUSTe and Epsilon released a nice whitepaper on the subject.