A newsletter sent from your own inbox shares its reputation with your everyday email, hits sending limits, and has no reliable unsubscribe. CASL requires identification and a working unsubscribe; a sending service handles both.

Two hundred addresses in the BCC line

Once a month, somebody at the business writes the newsletter in Outlook, pastes a few hundred addresses into the BCC line, and presses send.

It feels sensible. The software is already there, it costs nothing extra, and the email arrives looking like any other message from the business.

For a while it mostly works. Then replies mention the junk folder, ordinary emails start going missing, and somebody asks to be taken off the list for the third time.

None of this shows on the day it is sent. It builds quietly, month by month, until it reaches the email the business actually depends on.

What goes wrong

The second costs the most, because the damage does not stay with the newsletter. It follows every quote, invoice and reply the business sends.

Sending limits on an ordinary mailbox

Business mailboxes are built for conversation, not broadcasting. Most providers cap how many recipients an account can send to per message, per hour or per day, and every BCC address counts.

On many hosting accounts the cap is lower than people expect. A send that crosses it stops partway, and the rest of the list is delayed for hours or never gets the message.

Nobody is told which half went out. And while the account is over its limit, ordinary messages can queue behind the newsletter or fail with it.

The newsletter and the invoices share a reputation

Mail providers decide whether a message lands in the inbox or the junk folder partly on the reputation of the address and server that sent it.

A newsletter that a few recipients mark as spam, or that bounces off a dozen dead addresses every month, wears that reputation down.

When both come from the same mailbox, the quote you send on Tuesday carries whatever the newsletter did on Monday.

What CASL asks of every commercial email

Canada's anti-spam law, CASL, applies to commercial email, which includes a friendly monthly newsletter with an offer in it.

Each message needs consent, express or implied. A customer's purchase within the last two years counts as implied consent; an address that simply sits in your contacts does not, on its own.

Each message must identify the sender: the business name and mailing address, plus a phone number, email address or web address, all valid for at least sixty days after sending.

And each needs an unsubscribe mechanism that is easy to use and free, with every request honoured within ten business days.

Why reply-to-unsubscribe falls apart

A newsletter sent from Outlook usually handles unsubscribing with a line at the bottom: reply with "remove" and we will take you off.

That only works if every reply is noticed and the address comes off every copy of the list.

In most offices the list lives in several places: a contact group, a spreadsheet, last month's sent message. Removing someone from one of them is not removing them.

Someone who asked twice and still gets the newsletter rarely asks a third time. They press the spam button instead.

A worked example

A tattoo studio sends a monthly email listing guest artists, flash days and open appointment dates. The addresses came from a sign-up sheet at the desk and from years of booking emails.

The list of about three hundred went out from the studio's own mailbox in two batches, because the first attempt had stopped partway.

Then clients began saying the studio's booking confirmations were landing in junk. Two regulars who had asked to be removed were still on the list.

The studio moved the newsletter to a sending service. It imported the sign-up sheet and recent clients, and set aside the rest, which nobody could say had asked.

The service added the studio's address and an unsubscribe link to every message and dropped bounced addresses on its own. The booking confirmations stopped sharing a reputation with the newsletter.

What a sending service does instead

An email marketing service is built around the problems above. Each address gets its own copy of the message, so there is no BCC line to get wrong.

Every message carries an unsubscribe link that works at once, without anybody reading a reply, and the footer with your name and mailing address is added automatically.

Addresses that keep bouncing are removed, and the service records when and how each person signed up. That record matters, because under CASL the business has to be able to show consent.

Bulk mail also leaves from servers built and watched for it, so your everyday email stops sharing a reputation with the newsletter.

Moving the list without its problems

The technical part of the move is small for whoever looks after your website and email. The decisions about the list matter more.

Import the addresses you can account for: people who signed up, customers who bought within the last two years, others with a clear reason to be there. Set the rest aside.

Connect the sign-up form on your website directly to the service, so new subscribers never pass through a spreadsheet.

And have your domain authenticated, using records called SPF and DKIM, so the service's servers are recognised as allowed to send for your business.

The counter-case

Not every group email is a newsletter.

A short note to six trade partners about a change of address, or a personal message to a handful of long-standing clients, can reasonably come from your own mailbox, written to each of them.

If those messages are commercial, CASL still applies, so identification and a way to opt out belong in them too.

The line is crossed when the email goes out on a schedule, the list is longer than you could name from memory, or someone has asked to be removed. Past that point, move the list to a proper sending service.

This month

  1. Count the addresses in your newsletter group.
  2. Find every copy of the list.
  3. Collect pending removal requests from the inbox.
  4. Set aside addresses nobody can account for.
  5. Move the list to a sending service.
  6. Authenticate your domain with SPF and DKIM.
  7. Connect the website sign-up form directly.

Step three comes before anything is imported, because a removal request lost in the move is the one most likely to end in a complaint.

Why the list itself matters more than any one platform is covered in building the list Facebook cannot take away.

Frequently asked questions

Is sending a newsletter by BCC illegal?

Not in itself. Under CASL, each commercial email still needs consent, identification and a working unsubscribe, and those are hard to manage reliably from an ordinary inbox.

Why are my everyday emails going to junk?

Possibly because the newsletter leaves from the same address. Spam complaints and bounces from bulk mail wear down the reputation your quotes and invoices also depend on.

What must every commercial email include?

Your business name and mailing address, plus a phone number, email address or web address, valid for sixty days, and an unsubscribe honoured within ten business days.

Why does reply to unsubscribe fail?

It depends on someone noticing each reply and removing the address from every copy of the list. When that slips, people press the spam button instead.

When should I move to a sending service?

When the list is longer than you could name from memory, goes out on a schedule, grows from a website form, or someone has already asked to be removed.

Should I import every address I have?

No. Import people who signed up and customers who bought within the last two years. Set aside addresses nobody can account for rather than mailing them by habit.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Newsletter still going out by BCC?

Send us a copy of the last one. We will set up a sending service and move the list properly.

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