I use constant contact, and they are about as good as it gets. You might want to check out road runner too, but I'm pretty sure constant contact is the tops for email campaigns.

I have also used a program called OEM Pro which is awesome. You can buy this for a few hundred bucks and then you don't have to use an external server. I think they have all the features constant contact does, and if not, they at least compete.

As far as sending out emails, I think you're right, since you have had contact I don't think it violates a spam law, but I would do some research to see if there is a time limit on the contact just to make sure. As for preventing the people you send it out to deleting it or reading it and hating you, it will take some very carefully crafted text. Your message has to be professional, polished, polite, interesting, not spammy, and you have to make them feel safe and give them an opt out. Mention the fact that you had contact with them at one point and that's why you thought they may be interested in your new site. If it is really important to you, you may want hire a copywriter. I can suggest an excellent one if you need one who (and don't quote me on this) will probably write something up for you for around 250.

Good luck, use your best judgement and don't spam. :lol:

As far as sending out emails, I think you're right, since you have had contact I don't think it violates a spam law, but I would do some research to see if there is a time limit on the contact just to make sure.

Sorry for dragging up an old thread, just want to mention something to be careful of:
The real problem in practice is not if it's legal [I think it is]. The practical problem is, if someone reports your email as spam, can you prove prior contact?

In the current climate, you'll usually be regarded as guilty until proven innocent, and in some cases may not even get a chance to prove innocence. So there's a real danger of losing your hosting or ISP account.

There's another potential problem with 40,000 emails gathered over 6 years. Many of them will no longer exist, and larger ISPs could flag you as a spammer if they see a lot of emails coming from you to non-existent addresses on their network.

You could find your server blocked from emailing Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, EarthLink etc or your ISP could come under pressure to shut you down.

If I were in your situation, I wouldn't try to email these 40K addresses. Chances are only 5-10K are still valid, and I doubt you'd get 100 sign-ups out of that. The risks look too high to me for such a likely small reward.

What do you think of that?

I think it'll take 10-20 years :lol:

That should certainly lessen the dangers--and postpone them for sure.

I still think the return won't be worth the effort though. What you could do is separate out say 1,000 addresses to test. If you get a good return from them, keep going. If not, you won't have wasted much effort.