Hey @JennBee! This is a fabulous question. I love that you’re being mindful of your deliverability and keeping ethical practices top of mind.
Generally speaking, you’re totally right that you do not have consent to email these contacts and doing so would risk a huge spike in spam complaints since the audience is unfamiliar with your brand. I definitely do not advise you go that route. Instead, I’d ask your colleague who DOES have consent to send them a campaign introducing your brand and requesting them to subscribe. That way, you can still have the handoff without risking your own sender score.
I’d love to loop in some of our Champions, @Ashley I. @ebusiness pros and @Spark Bridge Digital LLC to weigh in here for what else you can do in this situation.
Hi Kaila -
This is basically what I thought too. 
Thanks for confirming.
Hi @JennBee - welcome to the community! This is a great question to see, and thanks @kaila.lawrence for making sure I saw it!
Here are a couple recommendations I’d add to help ensure you get the best possible outcome with this gifted list.
- When your friend refers his list to you (by sending a campaign prompting them to join your list now that he’s out of business) make it as easy as possible for them to get onboarded to your list so that consent is tracked
1b. So you could create a page on your website to hold an embedded Klaviyo Signup Form, with an optin CTA tailored to this audience. Your friend should link to that page in his email, and prompt people to join you that way.
1c. Consider what kind of special intro/ transition offer you might give people as an extra incentive to join your list while they don’t really trust you, but you have this unique moment of being referred by your friend. A lead magnet with PDF they’ll need to download is an especially good option here - it’s a natural way for you to follow up with an onboarding email, and they have a high incentive to click on that email and establish healthy engagement with you!
- Don’t send these people through your default onboarding flow/ Welcome Series. Create a version that’s specific to this audience for maximum retention (you could clone what exists and make slight modifications as needed).
2b. The very first email should remind them proactively how they “met” you and where they know you from. Having a lead magnet to deliver in this email is also helpful since they have meaningful motivation to actually open that email…
2c. Following emails in your flow should have a quick little P.S. section that reminds them “you were referred to me by NAME] and you signed up for this ]OFFER]” or something similar to that. This will keep your unsubscribe and spam rates as low as possible. Life is full, and people have a lot to remember so this is your fallback when they inevitably forget who you are since you’re a new name in their inbox.
2d. The best way to separate these people from the rest of your list, and segment them to trigger a specific onboarding flow, is to use a custom profile property to ID them. This can be configured as a hidden field on the subscribe button for the signup form you’ll build…
Best of luck with this transition! 40k new email referrals… what a gift from your friend!
Warmly,
Gabrielle
Gabrielle -
WOW! What great recommendations and insights! Thank you so so much! : ) And yes, very lucky he’s willing to do this for me.
All my best,
Jenn
You’re quite welcome, Jenn! I’m glad you found it helpful 
