I have a client who is married to an MP - I manage their Mailchimp account and they have a distribution list of about 5000 email accounts. The husband wants to use this distribution list to send out a personal email (in his name) discussing his political views. His physical address and phone number will be shown (suicidal in my eyes...) and it would come from his personal email account.

 

Firstly, is this spam? He's sending it as himself not as a business.

 

Secondly, if I was to agree and it turned out this was spam, would I be held legally responsible?

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited July 22, 201412 yr by Dcruize

Is the Mailchimp account purely for your client to keep in touch with her subscribers, presumably it has nothing to do with the MP's business? If so and the hubby uses the same list to send to (irrespective of the subject) outside of Mailchimp then I'd say that is unsolicited spam.

 

As the Mailchimp is for your client's business only then I'd suggest putting something in writing to tell her why using the list outside of Mailchimp isn't recommended, mentioning spam, abuse of trust etc etc. If the recipients found out where the list originated it could actually rebound negatively on her as well. You should also mention in your letter that you will not be held responsible for any use of the list if used outside the Mailchimp system, that way if she insisted you gave her the list to give to hubby you shouldn't be liable for any damages.

 

Just my 10p's worth

Thanks for the feedback - I missed a little off my original post. He wants to use Mailchimp to send the email with the reply to address as his gmail. I really wish I didn't have to be dealing with this, it's a very valuable account yet he is a nightmare!

 

I think the best thing I can do is to leave him to it. The mailshot is already written and ready to launch, I'll explain the dilemma and legal issue - if he wants to login to the account and hit send it's not my responsibility!

Edited July 22, 201412 yr by Dcruize

Keep us updated, if it all backfires there could be a divorce!

Why s/he is using your account to send email?

 

Did you receive any spam complaint from subscribers and email contains unsubscribe link?