Why does P-O Life sometimes send sponsored emails?

From time to time, we receive questions from readers about sponsored emails — particularly about why they receive them and whether their email address has been passed on to an advertiser.

So, we thought it might be useful to explain exactly how it works.

Your email address is NEVER sold or passed on

First and most importantly: P-O Life does not sell, rent or pass on our readers’ email addresses to advertisers or other third parties. EVER.

When we send a sponsored email, the advertiser does not receive our mailing list and does not have access to your email address.

Instead, the email is sent by P-O Life to our own subscribers, through our normal mailing system, in much the same way as we send our weekly newsletter.

We only agree to send sponsored messages when we think the product, service or information is likely to be relevant or useful to our readership.

Why do we send sponsored emails at all?

The simple answer is that root of all evil – money!  P-O Life has to pay its bills!

For more than 20 years, P-O Life has provided local information to the English-speaking community of the Pyrénées-Orientales, completely free of charge.

Our website, weekly newsletter and magazine take a considerable amount of time and money to produce and maintain. There are website and technical costs, printing and distribution costs, software and mailing costs, photography, design and countless other expenses — as well as the considerable amount of work involved in researching, writing, editing and keeping everything up to date. We are not complaining. It’s a passion – but passion still comes at a price.

We don’t charge readers a subscription for the website or newsletter, and we  receive no grant or public funding to cover the cost of producing them.

Advertising is what makes it possible for us to keep providing P-O Life as a free service.

Most of that advertising is in the form of adverts on the website and in the magazine, but occasionally an advertiser will pay us to send a sponsored email to our readership.

These emails help contribute towards the cost of keeping P-O Life going.

But what if I don’t want sponsored emails?

We completely understand that not everyone wants to receive promotional messages. We don’t either! We promise we will not send out more than two per month.

At present, our mailing system does not necessarily allow us to offer a separate opt-out for sponsored emails (or if it does we haven’t yet understood how to do it 🙂  while continuing to send the weekly P-O Life newsletter. We are looking into what options may be available.

If you decide that you would rather not receive any emails from P-O Life, you can unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of any of our newsletter emails. This will remove your address from our mailing list altogether. We understand – but we will be sad to lose you.

We appreciate that this isn’t an ideal solution for someone who enjoys the newsletter but doesn’t want the occasional sponsored message.

A little support goes a long way

We know that inboxes are increasingly crowded, often with unsollicited emails,  and we don’t want to bombard our readers with advertising. We are already working on a clean up of the online adverts on the website which spoil the reading experience. Sponsored emails are therefore relatively occasional, and we try to make sure that anything we send is appropriate for our readership.

But they do play an important role in helping us continue to provide P-O Life free of charge to the local community.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why an occasional sponsored message lands in your inbox, now you know: your email address hasn’t been sold, the advertiser doesn’t have your details, and the income helps us keep P-O Life running.

And if you continue to read our newsletter, visit the website, pick up the magazine and tell your friends about P-O Life, thank you. That’s what makes all the work worthwhile!