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What are the best practices for using an existing email list for a new sub-company?

Summary

Using an existing email list for a new sub-company presents both opportunities and significant challenges for email deliverability. While it might seem efficient to leverage a pre-existing audience, it is critical to address consent, relevance, and sender reputation concerns to avoid potential issues such as increased unsubscribe rates, spam complaints, and damage to your domain's sending reputation. The core principle is to manage subscriber expectations and ensure clear communication about the relationship between the old and new entities.

What email marketers say

Email marketers often face the practical challenge of balancing business growth with maintaining strong sender reputation when launching new ventures. Their collective wisdom points towards cautious, consent-driven strategies that prioritize subscriber experience and long-term deliverability over immediate list size. The prevailing sentiment is that a smaller, engaged list is far more valuable than a large, unresponsive one, especially when introducing a new brand or product line to an existing audience.

Marketer view

Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests that companies that have done this in the past treated the new sub-company's message as a sponsored message from the old company. This approach can help maintain a sense of continuity and trust with the existing subscriber base. It leverages the established relationship with the parent brand to introduce the new entity. They also advise creating a separate opt-out segment. This allows customers of the old company to easily opt out of the new company's specific campaigns without unsubscribing from all communications, preserving subscriber choice.

29 Mar 2019 - Email Geeks

Marketer view

Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests sending an introductory message about the new brand with an offer. This strategy aims to encourage people to sign up for a new list specifically for the sub-company, ensuring engagement from the outset. It helps to avoid starting with a high volume of unsubscribes, which can negatively impact sender reputation. This approach is particularly useful if the existing list has not been actively engaged, as it allows for a fresh start with genuinely interested subscribers.

29 Mar 2019 - Email Geeks

What the experts say

Email deliverability experts consistently warn against the perils of mismanaged list transfers between related entities. Their advice centers on protecting sender reputation, ensuring explicit consent, and recognizing that even within the same parent company, a new brand or different type of offering constitutes a new relationship with the subscriber. The consensus is that any perceived ambiguity in consent or relevance can lead to significant deliverability problems, including being blocklisted, with long-term consequences.

Expert view

Expert from Email Geeks strongly advises caution, particularly if the list of recipients is entirely new and represents a different type of audience. They question the acquisition method and purpose of these addresses, such as whether they were for product purchases or incentives, and how long ago they were acquired. This is crucial because consent and relevance diminish over time, increasing the risk of negative sender reputation impact.

29 Mar 2019 - Email Geeks

Expert view

Expert from Email Geeks suggests tailoring the introductory message to acknowledge the source of the contact. An example provided is: 'we appreciated your business at x, and wanted to make you aware of new group z.Y'. This approach builds trust by reminding recipients of their existing relationship with the parent company, making the introduction of the new sub-company more natural and less intrusive. Such transparency helps to minimize confusion and reduce unsubscribe rates, leading to better overall engagement.

29 Mar 2019 - Email Geeks

What the documentation says

Official documentation and industry best practices underscore the critical role of consent, list hygiene, and gradual warming when expanding email operations, especially with new sub-companies. These sources highlight that a sudden change in email content, sending domain, or sender identity for an existing list can be flagged as suspicious by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Adhering to established guidelines helps protect sender reputation and ensures messages reach the inbox reliably.

Technical article

Documentation from AWS explains that maintaining a healthy email database is crucial for deliverability. They emphasize making informed decisions that suit your business needs, which extends to how existing lists are leveraged for new ventures. A key takeaway is that an email list is a dynamic asset that requires continuous management and adaptation to new business objectives. Proper list segmentation and hygiene are foundational to this management, preventing issues when introducing new entities or offerings.

03 Jun 2020 - AWS

Technical article

Documentation from Constant Contact Community suggests creating a new list each time you upload contacts from an external file. Their reasoning is that uploading to an existing list simply adds new contacts, which might not be ideal for managing distinct segments or re-engagement strategies for a new sub-company. This implies that for clear segmentation and tracking, starting fresh for the new entity's subscribers is often preferable, even if those subscribers originate from a parent list.

10 Mar 2023 - Constant Contact Community

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