How to handle importing old email addresses?

Using Ghost
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My other site ran about 16 years prior to me switching over to Ghost. During that time there are a ton of people who registered, even though the old website didn’t support a feature to email out new posts.

Now that I’m on Ghost, and have just imported those old email addresses, I just know several are going to be no longer used. When I send out my next post I’m working on, there is likely going to be several email addresses that bounce. What is the best way to handle this in the Ghost Admin? Just look for members who are not opening the emails and eventually delete them? Or is there a better idea?

Thank you!

2

You may not like my answer, but here goes. [Reminder for anyone reading: I don’t work for Ghost, and this is my opinion on good email practice, not telling you any specific Ghost host’s policies.]

Did these people register to receive a newsletter? Did you confirm those addresses? (i.e. by having them click a link in email) Did you used to send emails to them?

If the answer is no and they didn’t sign up to receive regular emails from you, then you shouldn’t start emailing them your newsletter. If you haven’t been emailing them regularly, then (1) you probably have lots of addresses that will bounce and (2) a bunch of them have probably forgotten they ever signed up, and some of those will report you for spamming. Both of those are really bad for future deliverability, and can get you in trouble with your hosting provider and/or your email provider.

If they signed up to get website access or to leave comments, but weren’t signing up for a newsletter, then you might instead send the following, exactly once: "Hey! Super excited to announce that I’ve moved my website to a new platform, and have transferred user accounts over. Here’s how you get access to the site now: (Add magic link info.) Now that I’ve moved, you can get an email whenever I post, so that you never miss a post! (Add detail about how often you’re going to post.) If you’d like to receive these emails, here’s how: (Include link and instructions.)

And that’s it. If they subscribe, great. If they don’t, then you don’t send them your newsletter. In other words, I’d import them as UNSUBSCRIBED members, and let them opt in. Doing much more than that is starting to veer into the land of spamming. Don’t go there.

None of that advice applies to folks who’ve been regularly sending a newsletter and are just switching platforms, as long as your newsletter list had a functional unsubscribe mechanism and was double opt-in. Those folks can be imported to your new site as newsletter subscribers, as long as they didn’t unsubscribe on the old site. (It’s going to be important to get this right.) You might want to send them a “hey, things look a little different now” message, but they’re expecting to get email from you, so it’s all good.

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Thank you for this advice Cathy. So if I already have their email address in Ghost, and email the old registered users a one time message telling them about the new website, what should I have them do since their email address is already in the Ghost database? If they come check out the new website and try to subscribe via the portal, it sends them a secure link to login. But once logged in, it’s not very clear that they would then need to go into their account, and then email preferences, and then turn on the slider switch to enable the email newsletter option.

Might be best to keep all of these imported members already subscribed to the newsletter, then email them a one time message telling them they have been moved over to the new platform, and please unsubscribe if they are no longer interested, right?

Just thinking that may be the easiest option for 150+ people.

Thoughts?

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4

I decided to delete all of the email addresses that I recently imported into Ghost. Now I will send a one time email using the Mail app in MacOS. I will tell them of the move and invite them to subscribe if they are still interested.

Thanks Cathy!

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