Why I need your business mailing address

Before I can send marketing email for you — to your own list, or to people who haven't heard from you before — I need your business's mailing address. Just tell me the address in conversation — street, city, state, postal code, however you'd write it on an envelope — and I'll keep it on file.

Why I ask

Any commercial email has to carry a real physical mailing address for the business sending it. That's the law, not a preference of mine, and it applies to the message itself — so I can't send marketing email on your behalf without one, and I can't skip it or make one up. Someone choosing to join your list doesn't change that: their permission is about whether I may write to them, not about what the email has to carry. I add it to the bottom of those emails alongside a way for the recipient to opt out.

I only ask once. Once you've given me an address I won't ask again, and I'll use the same one for anything else that needs it.

If your business address is your home address

That's very common for a business run from home, and it's a real decision to make rather than something I'll decide for you. The address you give me is the one that appears at the bottom of the emails I send — so if you'd rather not put your home address in front of strangers, a PO box, a mailbox service, or a co-working address you can receive mail at all work. Any of them is fine by me; pick whichever you're comfortable having a stranger read.

What I do with it

I keep it with the rest of your business profile and use it for the legal footer on email I send for you. It isn't published on your website, it isn't shared with anyone, and it isn't included in the business reporting we run internally — that exclusion is deliberate, precisely because a business address is so often a home address. If you close your account, it's deleted along with the rest of your business's data.

Changing it

Tell me the new address and I'll replace the old one. It takes effect on the next email I send — anything already sent keeps whatever address it carried at the time, since I can't reach into a message someone already received.