Email marketing tip #3: What is the CAN-SPAM act and why is important for your email marketing?

bysmartketeer

6.8K followers

Updated 6 years ago

the CAN-SPAM act anyway? The backronym derives from “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing”. The act has been signed into law in 2003 by George W. Bush and establishes the United States’ first national standards for the sending of commercial emails.

I am convinced that you are very familiar with the term “spam” and you also probably know, that are serious legal penalties for crossing certain lines. What you may not know yet: as an email marketer you can face severe consequences even when you comply with the law, just for not using the “recommended” best practices! This is why is extremely important to know and to fulfill all the requirements included in the CAN-SPAM Act Compliance Guide. Let’s see a few important points:

• You need a relationship of affirmative consent between you and your business and anyone to whom you are going to send commercial messages or marketing emails.

• You must provide a free and simple way for your subscribers to opt out of receiving future messages.

• You need to deliver real, accurate information avoiding any misleading or deceptive content, method, strategy, etc.

• You need to include a physical business address in every single email sent by you or in your behalf.

Evidently, you don’t want to infuriate those government guys … But, as an email marketer you have a much more important goal: to become an acknowledged and trusted email sender. So, here are four simple, basic tips that will help you to sustain an email marketing strategy that is appreciated and well-received by your subscribers:

• Use only permission-based email lists.

• Ask your subscribers to share their preferences and send only the adequate, requested information. Don’t ever violate your permission standards by sending emails your subscribers didn’t sign up for.

• Establish, implement and sustain a proper mailing frequency in accordance with your goals and marketing methods.

• Don’t share your email list with anyone.

And now, I am going to share with you a hilarious and almost incredible fact: at a given moment Bill Gates has admitted that he is getting more spam than anyone he knows, and the most common ones are those offering get-rich-quick schemes and how-to-get-out-of-debt solutions. This tiny example accurately reflects the real, unimaginable magnitude of the whole spamming problem. It’s no wonder that any internet service provider (ISP) will act quickly, firmly and severely against anyone who is merely perceived or recognized as a spammer. Once you have been flagged as a spammer, you can forget email marketing. Period.

Usually, the consequences are catastrophical and fatal for any company or individual internet marketer, because:

• You’ll be blacklisted; your domain name and your IP address will be flagged. Once you end up on one of these blacklists – which are shared and distributed across the internet! -, it’s incredibly hard to get off.

• Your emails go undelivered; no comments needed I guess …

• Your brand will be severely damaged; email marketing is based on trust and once you have been stigmatized, your company will be quickly and irrevocably discredited.

• You’ll be liable for penalties; each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM act is subject to penalties up to $40,000+.

As you can see these are very serious issues, so keeping your emails legally compliant is the very first must-follow rule if you want to succeed in your email marketing.