Email marketing and the law

pfinney · 10-19-2010, 09:32 AM

The legal basics for email marketing in the UK

The fundamentals

The commercial nature of your message must be clear to the recipient from the outset
You must not conceal or disguise the origin of the message
You must give a valid unsubscribe address. Although it's inconvenient for all concerned, a postal address IS valid legally
Recipients of your email must have OPTED IN to receive it.

There are two exceptions to this last 'opt-in' rule:

You can promote your business products (only) to employees of a Limited Company.
If an individual has bought (or negotiated to buy) something from you, and provided their email address for this, you can promote SIMILAR goods and services to them. Note - you do not have to actually make the sale.

You must supply a valid and free opt-out mechanism.

'Forward to a Friend' and viral emails

We get asked about this a lot. Here are the basics:

If you offer a personal incentive for people to forward the email, and it's subsequently sent to people who are unhappy to receive it, then you are liable as the instigator of that email.

You cannot ask a recipient to provide you with other people's email addresses, unless you have the specific consent of those individuals - whether directly to you or via the original recipient.

For this reason, to protect you under the Data Protection Act, FrogEmail will not give you the email addresses of 'friends' who an email has been forwarded to.

You can:

Ask a recipient if they mind you PASSING THEIR DETAILS to a third party organisation to promote their products, and then if they agree pass on their details.

Ensure that the third party is reputable and complies with the law (eg with unsubscribes etc).

Send genuine business-related emails to your existing customers, or to people who have previously left their details with you when making a sales enquiry, provided the email is about a similar product.

You can't:

Treat competitions etc., as an 'opt in' way of building a mailing list - recipients must specifically say that they are opting in to receive promotional emails

Claim that a recipient has opted-in if you cannot provide evidence of that fact. Note - this applies if you purchase lists from third parties. It is your responsibility to check the source of the list.

You should:

Appoint a data protection officer to be responsible for your compliance with the law.

Email marketing and the law

myeanne · 10-22-2010, 06:08 AM

email marketing is the use of email to develop relationships with potential clients. It is an inexpensive way to advertise your company and its products and/or services compared to many other types of marketing.

jostinweb96 · 10-26-2010, 04:31 PM

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorizes a US$11,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient. Therefore, many commercial email marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the Act. A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the Act. To comply with the Act's regulation of commercial email, services typically require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.

In addition to satisfying legal requirements, email service providers began to help customers establish and manage their own email marketing campaigns. The service providers supply email templates and general best practices, as well as methods for handling subscriptions and cancellations automatically. They also provide statistics pertaining to the number of messages received and opened, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.

Legal Requirements of Email Marketing

stellaremar · 10-31-2010, 06:27 AM

Very nice information indeed. In email marketing it is important that your emails look personalized and not like a machine made.

mark25taylor · 11-26-2010, 04:27 AM

Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.