Internet Marketing Blog

I know I mentioned CAN-Spam in an earlier post ... but my dear friend, Abbie Drew, wrote a terrific article on the subject ...

"Are You Prepared for CAN-Spam?"
By: Abbie Drew, DEMC Editor


Well, I have great news to report. The federal CAN-Spam Bill
passed through Congress on Tuesday, 12/16/03, and President Bush
signed it into law. The CAN-Spam law became effective on January
1, 2004. This federal law pre-empts all state laws, making them
null and void.


We can put aside our fears about frivolous lawsuits from the
California law and stop worrying about the difficulties of trying
to comply with multiple state requirements. Now we just need to
follow the federal CAN-Spam law. Which fortunately, contains no
ability for individuals to file suits against email marketers.


What the CAN-Spam law does do is provide reasonable guidelines on
how to legally send commercial email. As a permission email
marketer, if your subscribers have double confirmed to receive
your messages, you are well prepared for complying with the law.


Before I review the main points of the law, there are a few
definitions to know. The first term is "affirmative consent"
which means a subscriber has expressly consented to receive your
messages, by taking an action. Currently, it is thought that a
pre-checked box on a form would NOT be deemed as "affirmative
consent."


The second term of importance is "commercial". A commercial
message is one whose primary purpose is to advertise the sale of
a product/service. An ezine whose primary purpose is to
disseminate information, therefore is not considered a commercial
message. Even though the ezine may contain ads if its primary
purpose is news - it is not commercial. Similarly transactional
or confirmation messages are not defined as commercial as they
review what has already been processed.


On the other hand, solo ads for third party advertisers to your
ezine list would be commercial.


Lastly the term "sender" means the persons who initiate the
message and whose product, service, or Internet web site is
advertised or promoted by the message.


The penalties of the CAN-Spam law, fines and/or jail time, occur
if you use abusive practices when sending email. To make sure you
do not accidentally violate the law here are the main points to
consider.


1) Do not falsify header information. Using a fake "From" address
or forging the source of your email messages is strictly
prohibited. Your "From" email address should be a valid, working
address. In addition, you do not want to tamper with the header
of your emails to hide who you are.


2) Do not use deceptive subject lines. You want to make sure the
subject line matches the content of your message. So be careful
with catchy subject lines that might trick people into opening
your message.


3) Do not harvest email addresses or use dictionary attacks to
create addresses. In addition buying addresses which were
obtained through opt out requests is prohibited.


4) Do not hijack resources to send email. Unauthorized relaying
of email or sending out your email broadcasts through 3rd party
machines without consent is prohibited.


5) Commercial email must have a working unsubscribe process.
Either a web link or return email address are acceptable for
unsubscribing. You have 10 business days to process
removal requests.


6) Senders of commercial email must honor removal requests. The
definition for "Sender" should be noted here. If you are sending
solo emailings for a 3rd party advertiser to your ezine list,
that advertiser as well as you are "senders". Therefore, you
should supply your advertiser upon completion of the emailing a
list of the "unsub" requests. Those "unsub" addresses should be
stored by the advertiser, as that advertiser must honor those
requests for no future mailings - even when sending to other
lists.


As the solo email advertiser, you'll want to ask for the "unsub"
addresses after any broadcast you send. Keep a database of these
"unsubs" and before emailing to any list have the list owner
eliminate any "unsubs" in your database from his/her list.


7) Include a valid physical postal address. Commercial email
messages are required to have either a postal street address or
PO box listed in the message.


8) Clear and conspicuous labeling as commercial. All commercial
email messages should be identified as an advertisement or
solicitation. This notification does not have to be in the
subject line. The notice simply has to be in the body of the
message and be an obvious label. (Exact wording and placement
were not specified.)


If a subscriber has given "affirmative consent" to receive
"commercial" email messages from a "sender" then it is not
necessary to label the message as an advertisement or
solicitation.


9) Clear and conspicuous labeling as sexually oriented. All email
messages containing sexually oriented material must be labeled as
such in the Subject line. The FTC will be supplying the label.


Again, subscribers that have given "affirmative consent" to
receive sexually oriented email messages do not need to have
their messages labeled as such.


As you can see from these highlights, it should not be difficult
to follow the CAN-Spam law. If you'd like to review the full text
of the law you can do so online at -
http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html .


The important points of consideration for permission email
marketers are keeping an updated unsubscribe list and proper
labeling of your messages. You might wonder - if an ezine has
been deemed to be non-commercial should you follow the
specifications for commercial email, such as including an
unsubscribe link and listing your postal address? My
recommendation is yes.


In reality the law does not prohibit the sending of unsolicited
commercial email. So you can email lots of ads to individuals who
have not given you permission, but I would not begin this
promotional tactic.


The wise course of action is to continue to follow best emailing
practices. This means getting double confirmation from
subscribers and having your ezine comply with the commercial
email regulations in the CAN-Spam law. Why should you take these
precautions?


Filters and ISPs have been affecting the delivery of our email,
not laws. The CAN-Spam law does not change the situation. In
fact, ISPs and email program filters are likely to become even
more strict with the email that actually gets delivered.


I expect with this new legitimization of commercial email, for a
time, there is going to be even more email competing for
attention in readers' in-boxes. To combat this, as we've already
seen, more and more people are demanding email filters control
the flow. Soon every email address will be protected by filters.


The only way for permission email marketers and publishers to get
our messages through, will be to have our "From" address "white
listed" by our subscribers. Without being "white listed" it's
unlikely our emails will be seen or read.


Of course to get your subscribers to "white list" you and to stay
"white listed" you are going to have to deliver great, targeted
content. And with the passage of the CAN-Spam law we can focus on
doing just that, providing the information our subscribers want.
We can continue to build our lists, develop relationships and
sell products/services to our readers. Yes, email marketing is
here to stay!


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Originally published in DEMC E-Magazine - The ezine which
improves your small business' profitability through permission
email marketing. Discover how to make more money with less effort
by harnessing the power of email. Visit http://www.demc.com
to get your free subscription.

Mike "featured contributor for DEMC" Merz