Email is often called the cockroach of the internet. It's one of the oldest of all the applications that make up the internet protocol suite and despite everyone's attempts to deprecate it with various shiny new communications platforms, email persists and is still widely used by billions of people. When done properly, sending your customers email updates via a mailing list is an excellent method of keeping in touch when social media platforms are uncooperative.
Good ol’ email is also one of the few methods of communication on the internet that's direct to a person without significant gatekeepers. Yes, there's spam filters and yes, you need a company to run an email server for you unless you want the technical challenge of running your own, but compared to social media algorithms or even the web and Google's SEO shenanigans, email is refreshingly transparent – someone signs up for email, you send them email, they read it!
What is a Mailing List?
You can pop as many email addresses as you like in the TO: field of a new email and everyone in that list gets the email, but when you've got dozens of email addresses you want to regularly send to, manually managing them is a headache. A mailing list is simply a list of email addresses that want to receive your emails, plus a bunch of fancy filters and options to make life easier.
The most common use for a mailing list is digital marketing. We've all got emails from online stores or other services we've signed up to sending us emails about new promotions. They all use mailing list software to make that happen. Many services start off free and then charge money the more emails you send, the more email addresses on your list, or a combination of both. They also include various templates and design tools that make creating each email very similar to using a word processor or writing a blog post, as well as code snippets, widgets and plugins for various platforms that allow people to sign up for your mailing list.
As usual, make sure any platform you use doesn't explicitly ban sex workers from using it. You can do this by checking the terms of service and/or acceptable use policy. It's often available right at the bottom of a mailing list provider's website, in little text near their privacy policy and other fine print that’s so hidden, it’s almost as if they don’t want you to read it!
Mailchimp for example, specifically calls out "escort services" and "pornography/sexually explicit content" as prohibited in its acceptable use policy, Campaign Monitor doesn't allow "pornography, nudity, adult novelty items, or escort services" and ActiveCampign bans "escort and dating services".
Obtain Consent Before Sending Emails
It's tempting to collect every email address you've ever interacted with or find email addresses on the web or social media, dump all of them into a mailing list platform and press send. It's only an email and if they don't like it they can just delete the email or unsubscribe, right? Oh hell no, don't do this! You must obtain the consent of the owner of an email address before sending them an email.
Not only is it just a polite thing to do, but not getting consent can lead to your mailing list account being banned by the platform operator and in some parts of the world, it could see you in trouble with the law should people complain. Wikipedia has a list of global spam regulations so you can look up what the situation is in your part of the world.
The best way to get email consent is a technique called "double opt-in". When someone visits a website to sign up to get emails from you and enters their email address, your mailing list software should email them to say, "hey, you sure you wanna get this email?" and they can click a link in the email to confirm that yes, they want to get your emails. If they don’t click that link, they aren’t added to the list.
If you're selling digital goods and want to send customers a newsletter or promotions after they've made a purchase, you also need to get explicit consent that they want further communications from you unrelated to the sale of that item. This is often done via the checkout system of your digital goods sale platform so the customer can decide to opt-in to getting emails from you. If they've agreed to opt-in, you can add that email to your mailing list platform, but if they don't, you can't send them anything except a receipt for the purchase and information on how to use what they've paid for.
There's plenty of creative methods to get people onto your mailing list, but that's out of the scope of this article. The main thing you need to remember is however you go about getting those email addresses – make sure they've double opted-in and you have their consent.
Make Unsubscribing Easy
Don't you hate it when you want to stop getting emails from a business but they make it a total pain in the arse to unsubscribe? Everyone hates it, so don't be like those businesses and make sure you have what's called "one-click unsubscribes".
Most mailing list platforms will do this automatically for you, so there's not much to worry about. They add an unsubscribe button or link to every email you send. When someone clicks it, they're removed from the list right away and you can't email them anymore.
Much like sending unsolicited email without consent, failure to properly unsubscribe an email address and continuing to send them emails is not only frustrating for the person receiving them, but can also be illegal. If someone wants to unsubscribe, make it easy for them and don't take it personally. There's a chance they'll come back one day if the experience was pleasant, but will absolutely not return if you made it difficult for them.
Avoiding Spam Filters
Have a peek at your email’s spam folder and you’ll notice that a large chunk of what's in there uses sex-related subjects to get people's attention. That's a problem for you, the legitimate sex worker that wants to send sex-related emails people asked for that are 100% not spam!
Spam filters look for key words and patterns that spammers use and block or delete emails using those techniques. There are free services you can use that test how likely your emails are to end up in people's spam folders:
- https://www.mail-tester.com/
- https://unspam.email/
- https://www.mailgenius.com/
- https://www.helloinbox.email/
As a general rule, don't include sex related terms in the subject line and refrain from using them too often in the body of the email. I know it’s tough when sex is what you’re selling! Other things to avoid:
- Poor grammar and spelling.
- Bright email body with lots of pictures, colors, and fonts.
- Multiple links.
- All caps and exclamation points.
This isn't an exhaustive list and sometimes Google's or Microsoft's spam filters just like to ban stuff for no good reason! If there was a sure fire way to avoid hitting a spam filter, then all the spammers do that, so legitimate emails running into spam filters are just a fact of life. I know, it sucks.
What Should I Send & How Often?
The beauty of email is that you can send whatever you like, as often as you like or as little as you like. There's no algorithm to feed here. You can tell people about any promotions on content you're selling, locations you might be visiting, new items for sale, or even simply a little hello and an update on what's going on in your life.
An email can be purely transactional or can be a way to allow people to get to know you better. There's no right or wrong way to do it! While not specific to sex work, The Inbox Collective is a great resource with best practices for mailing lists.
Communicate Directly With Your Customers
Email marketing is a fundamental practice for most modern businesses. There’s a reason every online store you’ve ever visited loves to get your email address – it works! The ability to communicate directly to your customers outside of social media restrictions and SEO gamification garbage is too good to not be using, and for sex workers it’s even more important as platforms continue to marginalise and shadowban.
Pick a friendly mailing list platform, collect email addresses via the double opt-in system, make it easy to unsubscribe, avoid common spam signals, and your mailing list will be an invaluable part of your business.
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