Recently I read a great article in the “Get to the Point” Email Marketing newsletter from Marketing Profs about what people consider spam. A recent Epsilon survey asked 4,000 consumers to identify what types of messages they would label as spam.
According to the survey, some people think an email is spam if it’s:
- Unwanted for any reason, regardless of subscriptions.
- Comes from companies with which the recipient has done business, but arrives too frequently.
- Tries to sell a product or service even when the recipient knows the company.
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
As a conclusion, regardless of what you define as spam, it matters what your subscribers consider as spam. Just beware that a subscriber may report your emails as spam even if your practices meet the CAN-SPAM requirements. However, if you abide by and practice sending clean emails that abide by the CAN-SPAM Act, you’ll be better prepared to prove any case against you.
For your reference, here is a list of CAN-SPAM’s requirements:
- Practice permission based marketing. Never send to someone who has not opted onto your list.
- Don’t use false or misleading header information.
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines.
- You must disclose and identify a message as an ad, if it is one.
- You must include physical address information.
- You must be clear about how a user can opt-out or future mailings.
- You must honor all opt-out requests within 30 days.
- You should communicate with any third party email sender. Even if you hire a company to handle your email marketing, you are still legally responsible to comply with the law. (That being said, Haley Marketing complies with all CAN-SPAM regulations and monitors opt-outs for our HaleyMail customers.)
For more information on CAN-SPAM Act regulations check out The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business.