How do I start email marketing to a 60k past-customer list I’ve never emailed?

Hi! Yes—it’s usually still worth launching email marketing to a past-customer list like this, but you’ll want to treat it like a “cold” audience and ramp up carefully so you don’t shock your deliverability (or your customers) with a sudden blast.

Before you send anything, do these quick “risk reducers” (they matter more than the exact sequence):

• Make sure your sending domain is authenticated (SPF + DKIM, and ideally DMARC) and that your “From” domain aligns with what you authenticate. This is now table-stakes for inbox placement with major mailbox providers.
• Use a real, monitored From/Reply-To (not “no-reply”), and include a clear unsubscribe in every marketing email (plus one-click/list-unsubscribe if your platform supports it).
• Clean obvious landmines: remove hard bounces, role accounts if you have them (info@, support@), and any addresses that previously unsubscribed or complained on transactional mail.

A practical warm-up + re-engagement approach (what I’d do)

You don’t need a long “apology tour,” but you do want to set expectations and start with your warmest segments.

1. Segment by recency first

• Start with buyers from the last 30–90 days, then 90–180, then 180–365, then older.
• Older = higher chance of spam complaints + dead inboxes, which can hurt deliverability for everyone.

1. Send a short “welcome back / preferences” email
   Keep it simple and customer-first:

• Remind them why they’re getting this (“You purchased X from us”).
• Tell them what you’ll send (product updates, tips, occasional promos).
• Give them an easy out (unsubscribe) and ideally a preferences link (“only product updates,” “only deals,” etc.).

1. Ramp volume gradually
   Instead of emailing all 60k at once, increase sends over a couple weeks while watching:

• bounce rate (especially hard bounces)
• spam complaints
• unsubscribe rate
• replies (good signal), and engagement (opens/clicks)

1. Only start promos after you’ve re-established engagement
   A good starter cadence is:

• Email 1: “You purchased + what to expect”
• Email 2: helpful content (how-to, best practices, new resources)
• Email 3: light offer tied to what they bought (upgrade, add-on, bundle)
  Then continue with a normal newsletter + occasional promotional campaigns.

1. Protect your sender reputation with suppression
   If someone hasn’t opened/clicked anything after, say, 3–6 attempts, stop mailing them for now (or move them to a slower “last chance” re-engagement). Continuously mailing unengaged contacts is a common path to the spam folder.

Compliance note (important, but not scary)

In the US, you generally can email past customers, but you still must follow basic commercial email rules (clear identification, a physical mailing address, and a working opt-out that you honor promptly). If you have customers in places like the EU/UK/Canada, consent rules can be stricter—so it’s worth sanity-checking your customer geography and what customers agreed to at checkout.

Estimating revenue without unrealistic expectations

A reasonable way is to model it like a funnel and use conservative ranges:

Expected revenue ≈ (delivered to inbox %) × (open rate) × (click rate) × (purchase conversion from click) × (average order value)

If you don’t know your rates yet, plug in cautious assumptions and run 2–3 scenarios:

• Conservative (cold list, early days)
• Moderate (after warm-up + segmentation)
• Optimistic (only after you see real engagement)

Two tips so you don’t fool yourself:

• Base the model on click-to-purchase conversion, not open rate (opens can be noisy).
• Start by forecasting on the most recent customer segment only; then expand once you see real performance.

If you tell me (1) your typical price point/AOV, (2) whether you have repeat purchases/upsells, and (3) roughly how old the oldest buyers are, I can help you sketch a conservative/moderate model and a first 2-week warm-up send plan.