A Long View of Email Marketing
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently made modifications to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Rather than go through great pains to differentiate between "opt-in" and "opt-out" (which I've done before), I'll explain what the general rules are, how you can get more information and why, regardless of what the law says, it's in your best interests to set a goal to do what is right instead of simply meet the minimum legal requirements.
Here's the rule in a nutshell, if you send out commercial emails (including those sent by non-profit organizations, but excluding "transactional or relationship" messages).
- You must give recipients the ability to opt-out.
- You cannot require anything but a recipient's email address and opt-out preferences to allow them to opt-out.
- You must include an accurately-registered address established by the U.S. Postal Service in the emails.
For more information, read the entire 109-page regulation here: FTC "Final Rule" for CAN-SPAM (312 Kb PDF).
The reason rules like this are created is usually because someone has flagrantly abused the wishes of the public, and the public consequently sought redress of their grievances through their representatives. The representatives, most of whom are lawyers, wrote a law that ceded authority to make some rules concerning the subject to the FTC (who, if they aren't lawyers, at least have a considerable staff of lawyers to help write the regulations).
As a result of that, anyone who wants to send out emails must become familiar with and conform to the regulations that they create. This entails:
- Finding out about the rules (to my knowledge, the FTC didn't send anyone an email letting them know the rules have changed)
- Reading the rules
- Auditing your processes and policies
- Adjusting as necessary
If everyone already did the right thing, none of this would be necessary!
So before you embark on a strategy that will result in the creation of so many 109-page documents that the rules are impossible to navigate without a team of attorneys, please -- just do what's right. I know you want your audience's email addresses, but they would be so much more valuable to you if they want to hear from you -- which you'll know if you asked them, in clear language, to opt-in, not opt-out.
Besides, attorneys are expensive. - Cam Beck
Cam, you forgot one other item. You had ten days to remove email addresses once you received notice, now you have three days.
Posted by: Paul Herring | May 24, 2008 at 05:04 AM