Picture this. You’ve got an event coming up. You open your Gmail, type out a quick message, pull up your spreadsheet of customer emails, copy-paste them all into the BCC field, and hit send.

That’s email marketing, right?

Well… technically yes. But also, kind of no.

And the gap between those two answers could cost you a lot more than you’d expect.

I’ve been talking to more and more home bakers, food truck operators, and farmstand vendors lately who are doing it exactly this way. And I get it – it works, at a small scale, and it feels simple. But there are some things hiding underneath that method that I really need you to know about.

So let’s talk about it.

The BCC Spreadsheet Method – and Why It Works Until It Doesn’t

Look, I’m not here to shame anybody. The spreadsheet-and-BCC approach is a genuine starting point and it does work when your list is tiny – like 10, 15, maybe 30 people who all know you personally.

But there is a ceiling. And underneath that ceiling, there are some real risks.

The first one is legal. The second one is technical. And both of them get worse the more your list grows – which, if you’re here, is exactly what you’re trying to do.

BIG BAD #1: The Legal Side You Probably Didn’t Know About

Here in the US, there’s a law called the CAN-SPAM Act. You’ve probably heard of it, but you might not realize it applies to you, even as a small home bakery business or food truck.

Any commercial email counts. That includes “hey, here’s what I’m stocking at the farmstand this weekend.”

That is a commercial email. And there are rules.

Important Rule A:
Every commercial email has to include a mailing address in the footer (it doesn’t have to be your home address – a PO box works, or I’ve personally made an arrangement with a local business to use their address).

You probably haven’t been including that, but that’s a relatively easy fix. The next one isn’t quite as simple.

Important Rule B:
Every email has to have a clear, working way for people to unsubscribe.

Granted, you can have a disclaimer on your emails that says something like “reply with the word “unsubscribe” to be unsubscribed from the list” and that DOES technically meet the requirements.

I’m betting if you’ve been BCC-ing from Outlook, you almost certainly haven’t been doing either of those things.

BUUUT here’s where it gets serious and why you at MINIMUM have to start putting those things in your emails.

If someone wants off your list and there’s no easy way to do it, the path of least resistance for them is to mark you as spam, which becomes a problem that I will explain below.

But – if they report you to the authorities for non-compliant commercial email, you could be looking at a $50,000 fine. Per email.

That is not covered by your business insurance. Because technically, you broke the law.

I’m not saying this to scare you into paralysis – I’m saying it because most people doing it this way have no idea. And a small list feels safe until suddenly it doesn’t.

If you’re outside the US, Canada and Europe have even stricter rules around documented, explicit consent to be on your list. So if you’ve been adding people who bought from you once but never specifically opted in – that’s a problem.

BIG BAD #2: You’ll Slowly Destroy Your Sender Reputation

Okay so that was the legal risk.

Here’s the one that’s almost guaranteed to cause problems if you keep growing your list this way.

Every email address has what’s called a sender reputation. Email servers are constantly communicating with each other, tracking which senders are legit and which ones are spammy. Some email addresses are outright blacklisted – their emails won’t even hit a spam folder, they just disappear entirely.

Your personal Gmail right now probably has a totally fine reputation. But here’s what happens over time.

As your list grows, some of those people are going to want to stop hearing from you. Maybe they moved. Maybe they changed their diet. Maybe they just had a bad day. And if there’s no unsubscribe link in your email, the easiest thing for them to do is hit “report spam.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re actually spamming or not. It doesn’t matter if you have a disclaimer at the bottom asking them to reply to the email and ask to be taken off.

PEOPLE are HUMANS and they will most of the time take the easy way out (and most of the time they will have absolutely zero clue that it has any negative impact on you at all).

For them, that’s problem solved, because they won’t have to see your emails anymore.

But for you, it dings your sender reputation.

One or two of those, the servers might ignore. But patterns get noticed. And once your reputation starts to drop, your emails start landing in spam folders – even for the people who want to hear from you. And if it gets bad enough, you could end up blacklisted to the point where you can’t even email your sister.

This isn’t a “might happen someday” situation.

This is a ” this will absolutely happen as you grow” situation.

If you’ve got 20 people on your list, you’re unlikely to see this happen. But as you grow… and you’re looking at more like 100… then 200… then 400… yeah, this is going to become a problem.

So the earlier you get ahead of it, the better.

What an Email Service Provider Actually Does

This is where email service providers – ESPs – come in. Think MailChimp, MailerLite, Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit), Klaviyo, etc – there’s lots of them.

These are companies that handle the whole thing for you.

They have the unsubscribe links built in, they have the address footer. They manage your sender reputation because they have established relationships with Gmail, Outlook, and all the major email servers.

The compliance stuff is just… baked in. You don’t have to think about it.

But that’s not even the best part.

With an ESP, you can actually see who’s opening your emails, what links they’re clicking, and what’s working. That data is how you get better at marketing over time. You can’t get any of that from Outlook.

You also get to set up automated welcome sequences – emails that go out automatically when someone new subscribes.

I LOVE these.

Automated welcome sequences are the secret sauce to being awesome at email marketing (that, and writing your emails correctly, aka not like some shady used-car-sales-type marketer)

You write them once, and then every single new person who joins your list gets that introduction, that warmup, that relationship-building – without you doing anything. While you’re sleeping, at your market booth, while you’re doing literally anything else.

And speaking of joining your list – with an ESP, people sign themselves up through a form. No more squinting at handwritten email addresses on little slips of paper and hoping you typed it in right.

They put in their own email, hit submit, and they’re on your list. You can put that form link in your Instagram bio, on your Facebook page, on your Google Business profile, on a QR code at your booth. People can join your list while you’re not even there.

That is the kind of thing that scales. Whether five people sign up this week or five hundred, it’s the same amount of work on your end.

Guess what – that means it’s LESS TIME FOR YOU TO FUSS WITH IT.

And as I constantly yammer about – your time is your biggest business expense. It’s the one thing you can’t get back or get more of. Anything that protects your time is worth paying attention to.

(Also side note – most of them have free plans, by the way. So the “I can’t afford it” argument doesn’t really hold up. 😅)

Why I Use MailerLite

I’ve used a lot of ESPs over the years – MailChimp, AWeber, Kit. Right now I use MailerLite and here’s why.

The interface is clean and simple. I prefer to write text emails with maybe an image or two, no fancy templates, and it’s pretty straightforward with Mailerlite. Their free plan goes up to 500 subscribers. And – this is the big one – their free plan includes automated sequences.

A lot of free plans don’t include that… which, btw, I think is completely backwards given that these ESPs won’t make money off us until we grow our lists bigger, and automations are kind of key to growing and engaging a list… but eh, who am I to tell them what to do!

So MailerLite wins, and is what I recommend, especially when you’re starting out.

Start Here

Here’s the thing. You don’t have to overhaul everything today. But if you’re currently doing the spreadsheet-and-BCC method, you are exposed. And the risk only grows as your list does.

The fix is not complicated. It’s actually easier than what you’re doing now.

I have a free download at bethanyarcher.com/start that walks you through the whole process of setting up your email list with MailerLite, step by step. It’ll take maybe an hour or two, and once it’s done, you’ll have a real foundation to grow from.

And yes – it’s worth doing this with just ONE person on your list. You’ll be set up right from the get-go and won’t have to worry about anything.

Go grab it at bethanyarcher.com/start and let’s get you set up.