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The Truth about Email Marketing, In-house Data and SPAM

As promised, the second half of “The Truth about Email Marketing”. Loyalty is not what it used to be due to endless changes in the market and how America does business. This is not in any way a political blog, more like a pro-successful business blog. It is important to make sure you have some sort of Loyalty program in your Marketing plan because your customers are easier to retain then going out and finding new ones. Using email marketing to keep in touch or build a relationship is a great idea.

I believe as stated in my last posting that anti-spam regulations popped up after certain businesses and individuals decided to work the system. Pharmaceutical ads and offers to sell replica watches, etc are the bigger offenders. Others SPAM and get away with it and some SPAM and are blatantly just sending out emails in bulk with no regard for the audience.

Here are the facts about the CAN-SPAM act enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. This is no joke… very serious and a good reason to stay compliant. Also, here is a link to an Anti-SPAM Executive Summary by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) that lists State guidelines as well.

The answer to the question about the act that pasted below is showstopper if violated; Up to $16,000 fine for each email in violation.  The only way this could keep you from going out of business quickly is if you are very good at generating revenue in other ways to support their SPAM habit.

Q. What are the penalties for violating the CAN-SPAM Act?

A. Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, and more than one person may be held responsible for violations. For example, both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that originated the message may be legally responsible. Email that makes misleading claims about products or services also may be subject to laws outlawing deceptive advertising, like Section 5 of the FTC Act. The CAN-SPAM Act has certain aggravated violations that may give rise to additional fines. The law provides for criminal penalties – including imprisonment – for:

• accessing someone else’s computer to send spam without permission,
• using false information to register for multiple email accounts or domain names,
• relaying or retransmitting multiple spam messages through a computer to mislead others about the origin of the message,
• harvesting email addresses or generating them through a dictionary attack (the practice of sending email to addresses made up of random letters and numbers in the hope of reaching valid ones), and
• taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without permission.

Here are the rules – What you need to do to keep from violating the act

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

It isn’t that difficult to stay compliant

In my opinion, there are a few common sense rules to follow that should keep you out of trouble with the Federal Trade Commission and State Laws that prohibit SPAM. These are all for the purpose of Loyalty initiatives and if you want more insight in acquisition campaigns, read at the last post The Truth about email Marketing – Acquisition Campaigns.

• Have a relationship with the person you are contacting. If they are a customer and have indicated that they would like to hear from you, feel free to communicate with them
• If the recipient asked to be removed from the list – Remove them from the list! NOW!
• Make sure there is an opt out option on the email
• Identify an ad as an ad
• Be honest – sell what you say you are selling and make your content relevant to your subject. In other words, don’t try to sell pharmaceuticals with the subject line – Refinance Your Home with No Points
• Don’t over communicate! If you think you are sending too much email then you probably are. Think about how often you want to hear from someone trying to sell something to you. Ask your friends and colleagues and set up a frequency that makes sense. Some people report you as SPAM because you email them too often, even if they signed up to begin with
• Promote to people that fit the promotion, or at least seem to fit. Another reason to segment your database

There are plenty of reasons to second-guess how one will respond to an email communication. As stated in the previous blog, a solid database is the heart of marketing communication and email marketing needs extra attention. People are protective of their inbox and want to do their best to keep it from being filled with non-sense. Bad email procedures could turn a good customer into an upset email recipient. Know your data, segment and think about your audience,

Some businesses thrive using email marketing because they cooked up a recipe that is enticing, attractive and walks the fine line of good and bad communication. Ask yourself this, If you received a Birthday or New Year card, Anniversary (of your business relationship or certain transaction), or the occasional special offer relevant to your interests, would it be spam. Would you unsubscribe to those types of communications or would you just delete if not interested. I would gamble on the latter and of course that is my opinion but if a relationship is formed, getting an appropriate email is something you welcome.

The Truth about Email Marketing – Acquisition Campaigns

The Truth about Email Marketing – Acquisition Campaigns  As an Independent Marketing Consultant, I pride myself on knowing and learning about industries I service and represent. I have been in the data business for close to 15 years and have seen a shift from traditional direct mail to eMarketing and Social Media advertising. A good database is always at the center of a successful direct marketing campaign, and that is even truer for an email campaign. As a marketer, I have always asked myself “if it is important or interesting to me, is it really spam?” The answer a lot of the time is ‘yes’ and oddly enough in the age of spam, I wouldn’t report or even unsubscribe some of the communications I receive.  Spam regulations occurred for people who abuse the system, and email marketing, the right way, is more difficult because the email list used for a campaign is better qualified… Here is email marketing the legitimate, non-Spam way, with a reputable data provider We, together with you, find the best target audience We email that audience asking them to opt into receiving email from your company They respond Yes or No. If yes, they will receive the email; if no or no response, we will exclude the email address. You only pay for the names that are able to receive the campaign. There might be a small fee or run charge on the full list You provide creative unless you would like our deployment department to create the email from scratch Email is deployed by the vendor and they provide reports on the deployment and responses After the vendor explains the process, they often hear: “Well that seems like a long process and we want to send out the email on our own.  We can get 100,000 email addresses for $500 so we will buy the names and email ourselves.” The result: Some sort of black listing usually follows this up from your Internet service provider. You also find a lot of unhappy people, not to mention the huge number of bounces because the names are not what we call “legitimate” or deliverable. Of course the worst case scenario for this company is action by the Federal Trade Commission based on regulation defined in the CAN-SPAM act. The reasoning for the process outlined above It might seem excessive to go through the process outlined above and it is for a reason.  Anyone can send an email and it is practically free. In order to keep companies from emailing everyone all the time for products and services they aren’t interested in, spam regulations were put into place.  The benefit of working with a vendor is that they help pre-qualify the leads by priming them to receive your communication and for that nominal fee mentioned; they filter out those that don’t want to hear from you. If you look at the return on investment of a real eMarketing campaign vs. emailing names you buy from “some company” you will see why doing things the right way pays off.  The example above is strictly for purchasing names you don’t already know. Email campaigns to existing customers that allow you to communicate with them via email are different. We can help with that process and I promise to give my opinion in a blog to come.

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