The Importance of Permission

The first step to building a successful audience is to get permission from contacts who want to receive your emails. Permission is not only common courtesy, it's required by our Terms of Use.

In this article, you'll learn about the importance of permission and what you can do to secure it.

How we define permission

Although people talk about permission in a variety of ways, it's something very specific when it comes to email marketing. Permission is express, verifiable consent to receive marketing communication.

Express means that when you asked for permission, your question wasn't tied in with another agreement. For example, a separate checkbox for "I would like to receive marketing email from XYZ company" is express and clear.

Because permission should also be verifiable, we recommend getting written or otherwise archived permission from each contact. When you use Mailchimp's signup forms, we track and record the date and time of submission, so you have verified permission.

Requirements and Best Practices for Audiences

Consequences without permission

People who haven't given you permission are more likely to report your emails as spam, and less likely to engage with your emails or make purchases. It's in your best interest to always secure express permission.

Spam reports can lead to aggressive spam filtering or denylisting (other providers may refer to it as "blacklisting"), which makes it impossible for some subscribers to receive any of your emails. This can also damage Mailchimp's reputation as a whole and negatively affect delivery for all our users.

Spam reports

When someone reports an email as spam, their inbox notifies their internet service provider (ISP) that the message in question looks suspicious. The ISP then tracks how many people on their network report emails from the sending domain as spam.

Unfortunately, a majority of email users report that they mark emails as spam that they know aren't spam. Some of these spam reports may actually be attempts to unsubscribe, so it's important that all of your emails include an unsubscribe link your subscribers can easily find.

Your recipients are also more likely to mark your emails as spam if they're not familiar with your company. Studies also show 43 percent of email users will report spam if they don't recognize the sender's From name or From email address. Make sure these labels are clearly tied to your brand, and send emails regularly so subscribers don't forget who you are. You should always include a permission reminder in your email footer.

About Abuse Complaints
About Accidental Abuse Complaints
The Unsubscribe Merge Tag
About Inactive and Stale Addresses
Edit the Permission Reminder

Spam filters

Spam complaints aren't the only way you can get denylisted by an ISP. Aggressive spam filters may detect sloppy code or "spammy" content, and flag your emails. There are no all-encompassing guidelines on what content to avoid, but in general we recommend you design your emails to be clean, clear, and balanced.

In a worst-case scenario, a firewall could be programmed to scan any email content for URLs that have been reported as spam or denylisted, and block the email that contains them. That means that if another person or business mentions one of your denylisted domains in their totally separate email, the ISP could block that user's emails too.

Increasingly, ISPs and anti-spam services share their records with each other. If you get reported to one, you could be blocked from others as well.

About Spam Filters
My emails are going to spam folders.
About Email Firewalls

Denylists

If enough people mark your emails as spam, the ISP can denylist you. When that happens, any message you send to anyone on their network will be blocked. ISPs have different thresholds for denylisting, but they tend to be very low. A few spam reports could get you blocked. Once you're on a denylist, it's very difficult to get yourself removed.

A few complaints can derail your email marketing for a long time, so it's critical to ensure your email marketing is permission-based and that your permission doesn't go stale.

How Denylists Work
When Email Addresses Go Stale

What you can do

To ensure a healthy audience, always secure permission before you send someone an email using Mailchimp. Never assume you have permission, and when in doubt, get confirmation.

Make sure your contact collection methods are compliant with our Terms of Use and never send unsolicited marketing emails. We strongly recommend you use our signup forms so you have a record of each person's signup.

Remember that any list of contacts obtained from a third-party source, no matter how reputable, violates our Terms and puts you at risk. Plus, the numbers show that a purchased audience is a useless audience, so permission is also important to your ROI.

Requirements and Best Practices for Audiences
Examples of Compliant and Non-Compliant Audiences