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Hi all,

Here is my question. My KS project is Science related. Therefore, I thought that it might interest scientists (in the particular domain).
I found out that it's super easy to get the names and email addresses of all the staff and students of many universities (from the USA, but also from different countries).
So, after about 2 weeks of work, I now have about 15.000 names and email addresses of people who I hope would be intersted in my project.

The thing is that I cannot and don't want to spam them.
I contacted MailChimp, asking for advices, and the confirmed that if I would to send 15,000 mails to people that did not actively opted-in to receive my mails, that would be spam, and my account would be closed.

So far, I didn't do anything with those 15,000 emails.

What would be the best way ?

My idea was to select about 5-10 people from each university (out of around 100-200 people on average), and send them a mail from my personal gmail account, telling them about my project, and asking them to forward my mail to their friends and colleagues.
In the mail would also be a link to my site, where they could opt-in to receive more mails.
There are about 60 universities, so that would mean between 300 and 600 mails.

Do you this this would be acceptable ?
Or do you have other ideas

Thanks a lot

Great question. Really love the creativity, hustle and effort you've put into gathering those emails.

Yes, what you suggested can work. You can even rinse and repeat until you've received a confirmation that they've sent it out to their list. However, that's really no guarantee that any of those email blasts will convert into much. When I've seen people just "buy" email lists (aka, list of randoms who don't even know the project), the list usually converts at less than 1%. More often than not it converts less than 0.5%.

Other things people do with an email list is to upload it as an audience on Facebook. That way, you're sending ads to them and if they do like what you're talking about, they'll opt-in to your email list. Once they do, you're free to chat them up about your project.

Since it seems that you have some time to work on lead generation, I'd recommend you just organically grow your list. Head to Facebook Groups (there are THOUSANDS so I'm sure you'll find one within your niche) and start adding value. Post about your topic and your niche to educate and entertain people who have the interest that you're looking for. That way, you can start forming real relationships and driving people back to your email list. You'll get people who actually know/like you and want to support your project when it does launch.

Hi Nomliz,
Thanks for your answer.
About the conversion rate : My guess is that if I target people who study (as teachers or students) the particular subject my campaign revolve around, it should interest them.
Let's say my project targets people who are interested in Greek philosophy. Contacting people from University classes that specialized on Greek Philisophy should lead to more people interested, than if I contact people who study Nuclear Physics.

Didn't know I could load an audience to Facebook. One problem I might have is that the email addresses I have are all from the Universities domain (John.Doe@ucla.edu), and not the personal email addresses. So, if the people used their personnal email address to connect to Facebook, most, if not all, email addresses won't match on FB.

About growing up my email list from FB, Instagram... : Yes, that's planned. But I still need to (in order) :
- Finish the prototypes
- Take nice pictures of the prototypes,
- Create a website with a landing page
- Start talking about my project on social media

So, it's at least a couple of months more work. But I'm not in a hurry.

Another thing people do with email lists is offer a product (like an ebook or a PDF of information they would be interested in). Some people create little email "courses" where they teach subscribers a new trick or tip over the course of a few emails.

Yes. The thing is that I don't have enough "gifts" for everyone.
What I thought of was doing a sweepstake, where there would be 1 lucky winner every week.

Thanks for the information. Very helpful.



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