Email Deliverability: Legally Mandated Mailings

As we bid adieu to '22, my inbox seemed to bulge with countless emails from brands notifying me that their terms & conditions had been updated, privacy policy amended, or another modification had been made to some fine print I never bothered to read the previous version of. These messages, useless at the best of times, seemed especially intrusive when flanked by the flurry of year-end wrap-ups, post-Christmas sales, and urgent requests for one final donation. If the notice was from a brand I'd interacted with recently then I deleted it without reading (if I need to find the terms of using a website, I can just...look at the website), but if I couldn't remember making a purchase, or knew I previously unsubscribed, then that message was reported as spam.

Plenty of great advice has been shared about sending "legally required" emails with minimal impact to your sending reputation, which I'll share in the comments. But as an anti-spam advocate and an email user myself, my take is that a brand's "need" to send an email should never override subscriber preferences or generally accepted best practices. In my experience, the email is often not truly mandatory, and doesn't really need to be delivered via email.

There are several other compelling reasons to reconsider sending that "mandatory" email.
Often, the list of addresses you're "required" to contact may contain bounces, unengaged addresses, spam traps, and other undesirables that can tank your deliverability. Even if engagement history is taken into consideration, a healthy list of active subscribers can still report the mail as spam, having a deleterious effect on future messaging and negating the hard work you've already done to establish a place in the inbox. If subscribers who are otherwise engaged mark the message as spam or unsubscribe, they may be removed from your list forever, resulting in the reduction of email revenue over the long term. Outside of email-specific outcomes, brand trust is diminished if people feel that their data is being retained for too long or used improperly.

Email is an owned channel insofar as you can take your mailing list with you between ESPs, but mailbox providers and subscribers ultimately own the delivery outcomes.

🛑 If you're being tasked with sending an email that doesn't facilitate a specific transaction or provide value...

✖️If you're considering contacting people who did not specifically opt-in, or have previously opted out...

⛔ If you have even the tiniest inkling that an email won't be received positively...

🥇Reassess! Consider using another channel that fulfills your obligations without risking your reputation.
Mailbox providers and blocklist operators don't take "but it was a required message" as an excuse, and neither do subscribers. The ease and ubiquity of email don't negate best practices. If the email isn't wanted or expected, it doesn't need to be an email at all.