How Do You Manage Previous Unsubscribes for a New Company Announcement?

[Tom_Kerlin2]

Hello,

My company will potentially be going to market under a completely new name once the acquisition/merger is finalized. We've already started working on the new email templates to reflect this potential outcome, but I'm not sure how to best legally manage our current unsubscribes. For this announcement we plan on utilizing only Marketo instead of also utilizing our other email service provider (which also has its own database containing its own unsubscribes).

1.) My question is once an organization undergoes a major restructuring and decides to go to market under a new name, is it considered a brand new company and one that technically doesn't have any unsubscribers? As an FYI, we plan on including old logos in the email footer.

2.) Just to be on the safe side, we are thinking about inheriting all of our unsubscribe lists and suppressing them, but then in another communication we could send exclusively to our unsubscribes and ask them if they wanted to opt-in to new company communications?

• However, this may be going out to some of our international clients, so would we want to set up so that its adhering to double opt-in best practices? If so, what would that entail?

Ultimately I just want to be in compliance with CAN-SPAM laws, so if anyone has any legal information to share I'd appreciate that.

Thanks,

Tom

[David_Gaible · Accepted solution]

Hi Tom Kerlin​,

I've been in a similar situation before, and I can't stress this recommendation enough: ask your legal team for guidance. In my experience, the legal resources brought in to work through an acquisition will have this as a 'to-do' on their checklist.