This story might sound familiar to you.

Last week I got an email from a random woman.

The email was for a cosmetics company that I didn't recognise.

I looked at it and I thought, 'What even IS this?'

I wracked my brains trying to work out if I'd subscribed to the list.

Couldn't remember ever seeing the website.

Couldn't remember ever purchasing the product. Or using it. Or seeing it anywhere, even!

So, I did what any rational person would do: Hit unsubscribe. But I also sent the sender an email.

'Hey there,' I wrote as jovially as I could muster. 'I didn't subscribe to this list, and would appreciate not getting any more email from you.'

Almost immediately, the lady replied.

'We met at a market, aeons ago,' she wrote. 'And you signed up to my list in person that day.'

Ohhhhhh, methinks. My mind threw me an image from a market at Gumeracha or somewhere deep in the hills, one chilly autumn morning.

That really WAS aeons ago!

Seriously, it was a market I went to back in about 2013 or 2014, when my business was new and I was doing all the things to see what was valuable. A maker's market was one of those things. It turned out that I had been added to some dusty digital ledger, but not gotten anything out of it myself.

At this point I found myself teaching the sender about rules of email lists.

When I explained them to her, she said, 'OMG I had no idea there were rules!'

And then I wondered: How many others actually know them?

Do you know them?

Well, I guess the first thing to know is that there ARE rules.

Then:

First, the person must subscribe themselves, unless you obtain written or verbal permission directly from the person.

Second, if someone is on your list and you haven't emailed them for 12 months, you must seek their permission before you send them anything.

Like, 'hey you're on an old list of mine and I wonder if you'd be interested in hearing from me again?'

Third, you've got to comply with Spam rules across the world. They vary by territory: Australia's is the Spam Act 2003, Canada has three separate Acts that address spam, the USA has the CAN-Spam Act etc. You'll find them all on Wikipedia if you're curious.

Luckily for you, most email marketing platforms have done all the Legislative Legwork for you.

As for the rest? That's all you, pixieling. 

This is why it's important that if you work with someone for your email marketing, they actually know what they're doing.

You might be surprised to learn that one of the ghostwriting services I offer is to write your emails for you. And I can give you great insights into which platforms work and which ones suck monkey brains: