A few weeks ago the Can-Spam Act was updated. It had been a full 3 years since the Federal Trade Commission first issued the May 2005 discretionary Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that lead up to the recent update.

The Can-Spam Act is the law that governs email marketing and largely establishes the base framework by which companies can send mass email. While email marketing best practices may differ from simply meeting these guidelines, it is important for every marketer to follow these rules at the bare minimum.

For marketers that had adopted ‘best practices’ before the update, it really won’t change much at all.

The most important ruling from the recent update related to the opt-out period. Back in 2005 the FTC proposed changing the law so that companies had 3 business days to process an opt-out request. Many in the email community challenged this proposal for various reasons and, I am happy to report, were victorious in their efforts. The FTC preserved that the rule will stay at 10 business days. Obviously all marketers should strive for the fastest opt-out time possible, but at this least way there is no additional added pressure, especially for larger organizations that may have several departments attempting to coordinate.

While the FTC has taken step to refine and clarify the law, most email marketers (including those using Elite Email) will not really have to adjust their practices since they are already meeting, if not exceeding, the requirements.

Here is a quick “current” summary of some key elements of the Can-Spam Act:

CAN-SPAM Requires that:

1. Provide a fully-functioning method for the receiver to opt-out (ie. unsubscribe) of your mailings in each and every mailing, and that the act of opting out can only require a single action. This means that the recipient either can click a link that takes them to the opt-out page or reply to the email to opt-out. In either case it can require no further action, such as filling out a survey. You can ask people to provide feedback as to why they are opting-out, but you cannot make that a condition to the removal. In addition, you cannot require someone to enter a password or any other form of credentials, or to have to click through to a second page, in order to effect the opt-out.
2. All information in your email, including the email headers and body/content of the email, be true, accurate, and not misleading. Essentially you are not allowed to pretend to be someone you are not!
3. You must honor all opt-out/unsubscribe requests, and immediately remove the user from your mailing list. You also need to stop sharing the user’s address with anybody, including previously agreed-to partners. You may not “repurpose” a subscriber’s email address once they opt-out by adding it to a different mailing list, or sharing it with someone else. So, overall, if someone asks you to stop emailing them…stop!
4. For any email you send that contains the advertisements of someone other than yourself or your company, the entity that the email is “From” must also have their own advertisement in the email. This basically means that the “From” sender must match at least one advertisement within the email. Doing so makes the “From” sender the “designated sender” under CAN-SPAM, making them responsible for processing all opt-out requests. If you don’t have a designated sender then each and every entity advertised in the email becomes responsible for processing opt-out requests.
5. You include your physical mailing address in each and every mailing. This can be your actual street address, a post office box, or a private mail box (“PMB”). A “PMB” includes a mailbox you may have at a store like Mailboxes Etc.

CAN-SPAM Applies To:

1.  Any bulk/mass commercial email sent to a mailing lists of any size. For instance, if you send two or more pieces of nearly identical email to two or more different people, your email can be classified as bulk commercial email for the purposes of CAN-SPAM.
2. Email that has a primary purpose of featuring your goods, services, or content even if you do not send the email yourself. This means that if you partner with a company to send out emails promoting your products/services, you can’t point the finger at them and think you’re off the hook.
3. All email sent out by your affiliates on your behalf.

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In closing, I will say that the FTC listened closely to what members in the email community had to say on the various issues and I believe that has led to strong forward progress.