The
Top Five Questions and Answers about Responsible
Email Marketing
By Mike Adams
Question One: How do I make
sure I don’t break the law?
I've been asked this question many, many times
by people interested in email marketing, and
this question always surprises me, because it
is very easy to avoid violating federal law when
you're sending permission email to your customers,
prospects, readers, or members.
In fact, there is far too much worry and concern
about breaking federal law that is justified
because the federal law is proving to be very
weak on clamping down on spam. Now I don't mean
to say this is a good thing, because I think
the federal law should have been much stronger;
however, it does make it easy for you to avoid
violating the law. The truth for legitimate businesses
is there is little to be concerned about as long
as you respect your customer and conduct your
email marketing campaigns in accordance with
a high level of respect and integrity.
For example: a company that respects
its subscribers would always offer its subscribers
an opportunity to opt-out of any email list or
newsletter. This same opt-out mechanism is of
course stated in the
federal Can-Spam law. It really doesn't need
to be stated there because any person conducting
high integrity email marketing automatically puts
opt-outs in each email because they want to keep
their subscribers happy and they don't want to
anger prospects or customers who don't want to
receive their emails.
You can also avoid running afoul of
the federal Can-Spam law by making sure that you
document the permission of each person you are
emailing. This is also very easy to do. Simply
make sure that you have a subscription form that
sends out a confirmation email—the double
opt-in process—and then make sure that you
respect the permission of each subscriber by only
emailing those who are remaining on the list.
There
are several other things you must avoid to stay
in compliance with the federal Can-Spam law, including
not harvesting email addresses from the web, not
engaging in what are called “dictionary”
attacks, and not using misleading subject lines
or email headers. In other words, don't do the
kinds of things that spammers would do. Make sure
your email is sent only to people who have opted-in—those
who have given you permission to send them email—and
ensure your email message is relevant to that
person. Again, it should also have a clearly labeled
subject line and offer each subscriber and opt-out
mechanism in case they do not wish to receive
further emails from you.
Staying in compliance with the federal Can-Spam
Act is very simple, and the vast majority of
honest, responsible email marketers who have
experience in the business will have to make
absolutely no changes to their email campaigns
in order to comply with the law. The only ones
who will have to alter their behavior to comply
with the law are, in fact, the same people who
would never comply with the law: the spammers.
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