What is spam?

Spam is the unsolicited sending of electronic mail to anyone. This can be to individual addresses or to an entire email marketing list consisting of millions of contacts. Research has determined that over 50% of all email transactions taken place in the United States are considered to be spam. This is a very serious issue because not only does it slow down our days clearing out our inbox's of spam (potentially missing and deleting valid emails) it is also placing a lot of overhead on the network system as a whole.

With all the complaints about spam, receiving it, having your own valid emails picked up as it, worrying about the legal ramifications on it, I thought it a good idea to do some research for you and find out exactly what the deal was and what we can do to avoid being marked as a spammer and potentially having our server black listed.

Step up the CAN SPAM Act 2003

In an attempt to try to control spamming in some way the Federal Trade Commission of America created the CAN SPAM Act. This Act is quite simple in its nature and easy for you to abide by. It does not stop you from sending unsolicited email. It simply tries to regulate it.

What this means is that you can still send emails to people that have not explicitly signed up to your mailing list but you must abide by the laid out rules in order to avoid the penalties.

What are these rules?

The rules are simple and very easy to follow:

  • Do not set false or misleading header information.
    • That is your 'From' address, domain name etc must be correct. You cannot say you are from www.abc.com when you are in fact from www.xyz.com.
    • This does not mean that you always have to send from the same domain that Interspire Email Marketer is located on, it just means that the domain and person that you are saying you are must be real. So you can still send on your clients behalf from your own installation, just make sure they are real.
  • Do not set false or misleading subject lines
    • This is simple. Make sure that your emails subject line and the content of the email are one and the same. Do not try to trick your contacts into opening the email.
    • This does not mean that you are not allowed to be creative with your subject lines. They are the first point of contact with your contacts and as such must be catchy and make your contacts want to open the email. But being clever with your subject lines and being deceitful are completly different matters.
  • Give your contacts an opt out method
    • Once again, this is a pretty simple step. Make sure that you include in every email that you send out a way to unsubscribe.
    • Interspire Email Marketer provides you with 2 different methods to do this. The first is simply including the unsubscribe link (%%unsubscribelink%%) in your email. The second method is to create an unsubscribe form and place this on your website. From there you can link to the form from your email campaigns. Both methods are equally as valid.
  • You must identify yourself and your company clearly and let the contact know that this email is an advertisement.
    • Your email campaign needs to clearly inform your contact that you are trying to sell them something (if you are) and provide them with your companies name and a valid physical postal address.

What penalties can you expect for these?

"Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial email also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising."

What this means is that for every rule that you break in relation to this Act you could potentially be liable for $11,000. If you are found guilty of not allowing subscribers to unsubscribe as well as falsifying your from address so that your subscribers cannot get in touch with you then you could be liable for up to $22,000 in fines.

What does all this mean to me?

This can sound pretty full on but remember, if you do the right thing then you have nothing to worry about. Make sure you always have your details in your emails (Place them in your footer to be included), make sure you are honest with your contacts and you will be fine.

If you have any questions or comments at all about this please don't hesitate to post a comment bellow and I will get back to you.