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Business Brief 02 / 03
A 2008 article in B2B Online sums it up nicely: There is no risk associated with the inclusion on a distribution list of people who havent given their express permission to be contacted. Assuming that an email is not fraudulent or misleading, it may be sent lawfully to anyone in the country who has not opted out from future commercial emails from the sender. In addition to requiring that email recipients be allowed to stop receiving email from a company, CAN-SPAM has a range of provisions designed to make it clearer who is sending a given email and what the email is about.
For the typical B2B marketer, none of these provisions present any sort of difficulty, and thats appropriate - the intent of CAN-SPAM was not to eradicate the sorts of email we send. The purpose was to increase consumer protection by clamping down on the scams, phishing, and fly-by-night offers that are far more prevalent in the B2C world.
Business Brief 03 / 03
Process opt-out requests promptly and honor them - opt-out requests must be processed within 10 business days and must be maintained permanently. Senders cant charge a fee to process an opt-out, cant, require the recipient to give 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 (section 5(a)(4)). Dont sell or share email addresses of people who have unsubscribed - emails from recipients who have opted out may not be provided to any other entity seeking to send that party email (section 5(a)(4)). Offer recipients a way to receive some types of email from you while blocking others, along with a global unsubscribe option to stop all future email from your organization. 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. (section 5(a)(3)(B))
Resources Direct link to the CAN-SPAM regulations: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business B2Bs - Your eMail Policy Could Be Hurting You - Harvard Business Review: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/b2bs_your_email_policy_could_b.html Remember CAN-SPAM is Opt-Out, not Opt-In - BtoB Online: http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080811/FREE/765691262/1124/BTOBCOLUMNS Opt-Out Mistakes to Avoid (accidentally not complying): http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1716566/opting-out-gracefully