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Are Your Emails CANSPAM Compliant?
What is CANSPAM and why does it matter?
As email started to become more commonly used by people
who were online it was quickly discovered that if you could
send 40 million emails out to random email addresses that
some people would buy something.
That was good news for the people sending email and good
news for the small percentage that bought something but
it was TERRIBLE news for the other 39,998,247 email recipients.
And this happened daily.
That means that you and I spend time each day deleting
emails that have no relevance to you and I whatsoever.
The CANSPAM act was crafted to stem the tide of emails
hitting our inbox. At the same time software companies and
ISP's were writing spam filtering software to limit spam,
the legislators were hard at work.
The US Congress passed the CANSPAM Act into law in 2003
and it took effect on January 1, 2004. Spam is still an
ongoing problem but I should point out that the US Government
is one of the first in the world to enact legislation to
allow for prosecution of professional spammers.
Here are the basic components you need to ensure your emails
remain compliant.
1. Truth in Advertising.
You must not create false or misleading subject lines,
header files, or FROM information. Simply put,
if you tell the truth you'll be ok.
2. Physical Address.
You must put your physical address in the email.
3. Ability to Unsubcribe.
You must display a clear method for someone to stop
receiving an email.
4. Unsubscribe Requests.
You must honor requests to be removed from your list.
There are more specific details of the law and you can
read the actual
text here.
Mitch's Notes.
The CANSPAM Act does allow for the sending of bulk email
should you have a 'prior business relationship' with someone
however these days anytime someone receives an email they
don't want or don't remember asking for they may well label
it spam.
It's therefore my recommendation and our practice that
we require all of our email recipients to be of the double
opt-in variety. That means a reader fills in the form,
we send a confirmation email which asks the reader to click
on a link to verify they are a) a real person and b) asking
to receive email. If they do not do this, we do not
send an email.
This practice ensures less time spent on removing your
IP address from blacklists and you get a higher level of
deliverability.
One thing is for sure. It pays to follow best practices
in addition to keep your email program legal.
All the best,
If you have found this site to be helpful, please recommend
it to your fellow winemakerss:
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