Step one: Audit your subscription
process
This
is the single most important step you need to
take to make sure your email marketing activities
are fully compliant with federal law. At Arial
Software, we conducted research on the email subscription
handling at Fortune 1000 firms, and we've found
that a vast majority of companies do not adhere
to a double opt-in confirmation email subscription
process. This is shocking information, because
it means that as these companies are building
their permission email lists in-house, they really
have no way to verify that subscribers actually
asked to be subscribed. Thanks to the lack of
a double opt-in confirmation process on their
web site, virtually anyone could sign up anyone
else without their permission. These companies
would then be in the position of sending email
to subscribers who’ve never asked for it.
And this, of course, is the definition of spam.
So the first thing you must do is
enhance your email subscription process is to
make sure it operates on a double
opt-in rather than a confirmation principle.
In other words, when someone subscribes to your
email newsletter or whatever information you're
offering via email subscription, you must send
them an email with confirmation hyperlinks that
the subscriber must click in order to confirm
their intention to subscribe.
Furthermore, you must log the IP address,
date and time, and email address, of every subscription
request so you can prove to the subscriber (and
possibly the Federal
Trade Commission or FTC) that this person
indeed requested a subscription.
If you lack this information, then you're setting
yourself up for accusations and attacks by subscribers
and, potentially, the FTC. To be safe you must
be able to prove that every person you are emailing
has, indeed, requested to be emailed by you.
As simple as this precaution sounds, a shockingly
large number of well-known companies do not yet
adhere to these principles. These are legal time
bombs just waiting to go off. Yet there is no
need to subject yourself to this sort of legal
risk, since moving to a double opt-in confirm
email subscription process is exceedingly simple.
If you don't have the programming
talent in your company, you'll be glad to know
that Arial Software is launching
a service that does all this for you. The service
is called Zeop, and it automates the double opt-in
confirm subscription process through the use of
a web-based tool that you can easily add to any
web site you control. Check out www.zeop.com
for more information.
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