First, ask yourself this question. “Would your audience think that the messages you are sending are relevant?”

If you got your email, would you say “this is something I’m really interested in.”  If not, then don’t send it because you’ll regret it. It’s so hard to get people to give up their legitimate email address. Don’t take it lightly.

People always ask me, “How often should I be emailing people?”

How often do you have something relevant to say?  If you have something relevant every day, then you can hit them up every day.  Think about Groupon or Living Social.  Every day they have a deal.  So they email you every day.  Don’t send a quarterly email if you are doing it because it’s that time of the year. Send it because you have collected the best stuff of the quarter and your audience would really want to know about it.

Second, you are spamming people if they didn’t sign up for your email.

What’s that mean?  You can’t have a student or intern harvest emails from websites or listservs and/or directories that aren’t yours.  People need to sign up for your email.

It’s against the CAN-SPAM act and it can get the university “black-listed”, which can possibly shutdown the university’s email system.  If someone gave you a card or you have personally met them (over the past 2 years) and you asked them about signing up, then by all means, add them to the list.  Continue reading