I wrote an article not long ago about the CAN-SPAM Act and email newsletter marketing. It primarily touched on the most common mistakes in email marketing legal compliance. Also, much of what was addressed had more to do with business-to-consumer relationships and emails, and not business-to-business.

So what if your emails are more of a B2B situation and not B2C?

That discussion came up in the comments of the prior email marketing post, so I decided to bring some of those questions and answers to a new post for those who may be in a similar situation. Thank you Andrew for bringing this up! (I know you didn’t quite ask these questions this way, but it’s an easy-to-read format. And I’m addressing some things we didn’t touch on, or not cover well.)

Can I send other organizations unsolicited email?
The Bureau of Consumer Protections says, “The law makes no exception for business-to-business email”. In other words: whether your emails are going to businesses or consumers, you must be in compliance. Also, your ISP, web host, and email marketing company (such MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Vertical Response) all tend to include any unsolicited email as spam. At the very least, they are often inclined to view it that way. I would check with those organizations before beginning email campaigns to other businesses you have had no prior relationship with. Odds are good that what you are planning will be counted as spam by them and you risk getting your services shut down and blacklisted.

What if I just send out the emails one-at-a-time?
The Bureau of Consumer Protections says, “Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites.”

In other words: whether you are sending out one at a time, or many, it is still spam.

Is buying an email list illegal?
No. There’s nothing illegal about buying email lists, to my knowledge. Gathering email addresses by hand or buying a list are equally legal. However, just because you bought it doesn’t mean you’ll get to use it. Your ISP, web host, and email marketing services may have other thoughts on the matter. Some specifically forbid mailing lists created from purchased lists. What is legal, and what the TOS says for those services, can sometimes be different.

If you have never had any kind of prior contact with any individual or business, regardless of how you gathered the contact information, your web host, ISP and/or email marketing service may deem this to be spam. Web hosts, ISPs, and email marketing sites are within their right to tell you “no, you can’t do that” when it comes to your email newsletters too.

Personally, I won’t reach out to new organizations via email, but will instead do postal mail if I want to do a campaign of that sort.

Why is unsolicited postal mail OK but unsolicited email isn’t?
The main difference between unsolicited postal mail and unsolicited email is: you are paying for each mail you send via post office. If everyone at your ISP decided to send 100,000 emails per day, your Internet access fees would skyrocket. If everyone just sent millions of emails per day to emails scraped off websites everywhere, I suspect we’d bring the Internet to a standstill. The processing power needed would be massive and no one would be able to afford the servers to keep up with the demand.

How can I send as many emails as I want to anyone I want?
Buy your own server(s). Hire the people to maintain them. Pay your ISP for that kind of bandwidth. Get a loan. It won’t be cheap. There are web hosts out there that may have server packages out there for you that are more affordable, but for the average business on a shoestring budget, it may not be an option.

Further, let’s say you send out all these emails without breaking the Terms of Service (TOS) for your providers. Those on the receiving end of your email can just report your spam to THEIR provider, who will now blacklist you from their server. And now there are a pile of people you won’t reach. And in time, you’re going to find yourself blacklisted again and again.

On a personal note, I don’t do business with spammers. I don’t care if the email I get looks like the most awesome, supercalafragalistic web service ever, I’m not touching that company. I’m reporting them as spam and getting on with my day. Because these people either
a. don’t know better, which has me wondering how much else they don’t know about doing business online
b. do know better, but are people doing it anyway (and I prefer an ethical approach to business).

Either way, this is probably someone I don’t want to be in bed with.

People don’t like spam. If you want to maintain a good reputation for your business, just don’t do it.

I periodically see confusion as to what is legal when it comes to email newsletters. Even when people are reading the actual CAN-SPAM Act. I’m not going to cover every part of it. I’m going to address the most common mistakes.

Sometimes I get email from spammers that claims their email is sent in accordance with the CAN-SPAM Act. No, it’s not. If I have no prior relationship with an organization and haven’t signed up for their newsletter, they are in violation. Putting that in the bottom of an email does not make them compliant. Not at all.

So here’s the first thing you need to be clear on: buying a mailing list, even one that the seller claims is opt-in, is often a bad idea. More often than not, they’re not opt-in. It doesn’t count if the email addresses were harvested from sites where the Terms of Service tell users their email will be sold (because who reads those? Mostly just weird people like me). It doesn’t count when users are notified by small print at the bottom of the page, or hidden elsewhere on the site. That information needs to be right in front of the user’s face. Hiding the fact that an email address will be sold is not informing people their email will be sold. It’s, um, hiding the fact that their email address will be sold. And this is a common tactic from those selling “opt-in” email lists.

What is Opt-In?
Opt-In means someone signed up to receive your newsletter, usually via a form on your website. They did it knowing they would get a newsletter from you. It’s that simple.

Can I Ever Send A Newsletter to Someone That Hasn’t Opted-In?
Actually, yes. BUT…only in certain situations. The CAN-SPAM Act says that if you and the person you are emailing have a prior business relationship, and you are sending emails that assist in continuing that relationship, then you can email them without them having fill out an opt-in request. You can include commercial content (where you are trying to sell them something) but the primary message must be transactional (information that continues the business relationship).

For example, I can send emails to my current clients to give them information about changes at GeekArtist Web Solutions. I can let them know about new procedures or other changes in the company. However, if I want to send an email that is just selling them new services, they must have opted-in to the email newsletter list. If I were sending a notice to my clients notifying them of a new staff member, I could include links to our other services on part of the email. But the main message must be about the new staff member. I can’t just give one line about the new staff member, then fill up the email with sales content.

I Don’t Want to Include an Unsubscribe Link
That is not optional. If you want to send a compliant email, you must have an unsubscribe link. Some people are afraid to put them in because they are afraid everyone will unsubscribe. If you’re that concerned about it, I would ask you why this worries you. If you have helpful information, or users have signed up for the newsletter, or these are current customers, most will likely stay subscribed.

I Don’t Want to Include My Mailing Address
This is also not optional. If you run your business out of your home and don’t want to give your physical address, get a Post Office Box. A P.O. Box address is fine for email newsletters. But either a physical or P.O. address MUST be on the email.

The CAN-SPAM Act has a few more details you will want to be aware of. I have only addressed the more common pitfalls. You may find your situation is not addressed here. Make sure you visit the Bureau of Consumer Protection website and read their The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business.

Related Posts

• Enfamil Demonstrates How NOT to Run An Email Marketing Campaign
• Wanna Kill Your Business? Buy An Email List
• 12 Email Newsletter Tips for the Non-Techie

Related Posts From Other Sites

• The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business
• 6 email marketing myths debunked
• 5 Top Spam Myths that Still Haven’t Changed

Some of you may know, I had twins a while back. Anyone who has kids can tell you that you end up on mailing lists for all things baby very quickly. I get mail from companies I have no interest in doing business with, but birth records are public so there you are.

Add to that, stores such as Destination Maternity sell your contact information to other businesses. I suspect this is how Enfamil, a formula manufacturer owned by Mead Johnson & Company, LLC, got a hold of my email address.

From here, marketing hijinks ensue.

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One of the purposes of this blog is to clear up technology myths. I ran across an interesting article that just screamed to be written about in this blog.

This piece of “news” was released a few days ago: EXCLUSIVE: W.H. collects Web users’ data without notice.

In a nutshell, the article says “The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama’s promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.”

The article gives reactions from various groups who feel there is something sinister going on.

Bear with me. This post isn’t about politics. It’s actually about technology and business practices. And why this is actually not news.

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A lot of individuals are taken in by the hype surrounding email marketing. The websites look great, the results sound promising. I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again: “if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”. The Internet is just like your offline life. Never believe the two are different. Just because it’s in writing, doesn’t mean it’s true.

So why would I say buying an email list is bad when so many say it’s so good?

For starters…those saying its so good are frequently after your wallet. Ask yourself: who’s saying its so great? Are they in the business of selling those lists? Or in a business that is in any way related to that? Or maybe they’re a novice touting themselves as experts, just parroting what they’ve read (and believe me, there are a lot of those).

Ok, that doesn’t really answer the question. So why is it BAD? Two good reasons. (more…)