Throwaway90283

Hi HN, I have e-mail addresses for the members on one of my sites, and about 500,000 of them haven't been active in the past few months. I've never sent an e-mail before, but I was thinking about e-mailing everyone, mentioning improvements to the service, and trying to get them to return. A couple of questions...

1. Any recommendations for a platform to send 500,000 e-mails? MailChimp credits would run $0.005 per e-mail, or $2,500. I'm not saying that's too expensive, but I'm wondering if anyone has used other services with potentially cheaper prices, and the same results.

2. Secondly, has anyone on HN done something similar before (mass e-mailing users that have stopped using a service), and if so, did you see positive results? What percentage of users returned to the site through the e-mail? 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000? I have no idea what to expect, so I'm curious to hear some stories. Either way, I'll start small with 1,000 or 10,000 e-mails, and monitor the results. I'd need to see maybe 1/150 of those e-mails converting into a user that returns to the site for at least a year. Seems plausible.