Sure, you should be aware of the law and compliance issues if you use permission email marketing, but remember, the law is there to stop spammers - and that is a GOOD thing.

Keep that in mind as you read today's guest article, "Are You Prepared for CAN-Spam?"
 

While I rarely run guest articles in the gazette, I have one for you today. With all the hoopla being made of the new CAN-Spam law I thought I'd share some information about it.

Abbie Drew from demc.com has put together a report on the law and has graciously agreed to share it with my subscribers. I've known Abbie since 1996 and she's a straight shooter. She has a large ezine herself, so she knows the ropes when it comes to opt-in email marketing. I hope her article sheds a bit of light on the issue.

"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.
 

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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 - 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.

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