Use full disclosure during email address collection

Understanding and adhering to the tenets of the CAN-SPAM Act is important, but you aren’t going to impress too many consumers if your e-mails are just barely CAN-SPAM compliant. ISPs and ESPs expect your e-mail marketing efforts to comply with professional industry standards. Executing your e-mail marketing strategy in line with professional standards helps to improve consumer confidence and differentiates legitimate e-mailers from spammers.

The following sections include tips for keeping up with consumer trends and the practices of the most reputable ESPs and ISPs. You can read more about e-mail professionalism at the Email Sender and Provider Coalition Web site at espcoalition.org.

Using full disclosure during e-mail address collection

The CAN-SPAM Act encourages you to have affirmative consent with your e-mail list subscribers to send them commercial e-mail, but the most professional practice is to use an extra measure of disclosure when asking for permission. Here are some ways how you can take affirmative consent to a more professional level:

- Ask for explicit permission to send e-mail everywhere you collect e-mail addresses. Whether you exchange business cards with prospects in person or collect e-mail addresses through a form on your Web site, make sure you obtain explicit permission as part of the process. It’s also a good idea to keep a record of your permission exchanges in case you’re faced with a legal complaint in the future.

- If you use e-mail list check boxes on Web site forms, keep each check box cleared (unchecked) as the default. For example, if you use your Web site’s shipping form to collect e-mail addresses, require your shoppers to select a check box to add themselves to any non-transactional e-mail lists. Make sure that the check box also includes a description of the types of e-mails your shopper is signing up for.

- Send a professional welcome letter e-mail to all new e-mail list subscribers. Make sure that the welcome letter e-mail arrives within 24 hours of the initial subscription request and also include privacy information and a description of the types and frequency of e-mails that the new subscriber receives.

- Send periodic permission reminders to confirm that your e-mail list subscribers are still interested in your e-mails. You can send a periodic business letter or include a few sentences at the top of your e-mails asking your subscribers to confirm their interests.

Allowing your audience to unsubscribe from receiving e-mails

The CAN-SPAM Act requires that you include a way to allow your audience to unsubscribe from receiving future e-mails from you, but the law doesn’t specify which mechanisms are appropriate for processing unsubscribe requests. You can ask your subscribers to reply to your e-mails with their unsubscribe request and manually keep track of your unsubscribed prospects and customers, but this process can be tedious with larger lists.

The most professional practice, and the most automated, for processing unsubscribe requests is to use an ESP to automatically and permanently remove anyone who unsubscribes from all e-mail lists in one click.

Most reputable ESPs automatically insert a one-click unsubscribe link into your e-mails. When a subscriber clicks the link, the ESP automatically removes the subscriber or changes the status of the subscriber in the ESP’s database to unsubscribed so that the subscriber stops receiving e-mails immediately.

Providing a one-click unsubscribe mechanism gives your potential e-mail list subscribers confidence when subscribing to your e-mail lists and encourages them to differentiate your e-mail from spammers who use dubious opt-out methods, if any.