...But I don't like SPAM!

By Bryan Robison, Senior Data Specialist

Email is one of the most effective & cost-efficient ways to market your company’s products & services. It’s also a great way to reach out to new customers and to stay in contact with current ones. However, before hitting the “send” button on your next email marketing campaign, you need to ensure that it won’t be flagged as spam and that it complies with the Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM Act.

What exactly is ‘spam’? According to Spamhaus.com, an electronic message is "spam" if (A) the recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (B) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent. In other words, it’s all about consent and not content.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was enacted to help control the proliferation of unsolicited bulk email; to give recipients a way to opt out of receiving unsolicited messages; and to lay out penalties for violations. Some of the major requirements of this law include:

1) Use accurate headers, such as your “From,” “To,” & “Reply-To” names

2) Subject line must correlate to the content of email message

3) The message must include a valid physical postal address

4) Plainly give your recipients the choice to opt-out of receiving any future emails

5) Handle any & all opt-out requests promptly

And, CAN-SPAM is enforced. Just ask Kodak & ICE.com. Kodak Imaging Network sent over 2 million messages that didn't have an unsubscribe link or a physical address included in their emails. They were fined $26,000; not a pretty picture. ICE.com sent an email marketing campaign to 6,000 recipients who had previously unsubscribed. Their penalty: $6,500 in cold, hard cash.

Designing beautiful, catchy, interesting and/or whimsical email messages is the easy part; the hard part is ensuring that your recipients have opted-in and that you are CAN-SPAM compliant. Because your email messages are all about consent, not necessarily content.