Be fully compliant with local spam control and international anti-spam laws

August 4, 2008 · Filed Under Email Marketing 

Are your business-to-business or business-to-consumer marketing emails being marked by your recipients as SPAM or Junk Mail?

We have looked at the legal implications of sending email that people don’t want to receive any (even if they did want to receive those emails initially) and have distilled it down to a few rules that every email sender should adhere to.

Last week, we attended an industry meeting discussing the grey areas of the spam control and anti-spam legislation in Asia and around the world. While it is clear that we were already on track, we were very doubtful that email receivers clearly know what was to be classified as spam and what was not spam.

Here’s the guidelines that we can recommend you follow when sending your own email campaigns.

1) Sender Email: Have a valid ‘From’ email address. Make sure your bounce email (return-path) reaches a real account. Also check your ‘Reply-To’ address (if different from sender) works.

2) Subject Line: State the purpose of your email clearly. If you are sending an unsolicited commercial email (UCE) (which in fact is allowed only in Singapore) you must add: <ADV> before the subject line matter.

Subject: <ADV> Take the email marketing readiness test

3) Unsubscribe Option: You must allow your recipient to be able to unsubscribe from future email messages. You can either provide a web link or a reply-to address and instructions to unsubscribe.

4) Postal Address: If you are a US sender or sending to US-based email accounts (such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail) you have to provide a physical address where you can receive postal mail to allow unsubscribes.

5) Identify Youself and your business: The recipient must be clear who is sending the email and which commercial company it is from. People who are keen to do business with you would like to know who you are.

6) 10 Days Rule: Process any unsubscribe request within 10 days or less.

Make it a point to be compliant with the laws of the countries within which you operate, have contact with clients in that country or use a service provider from that country.

For more information and clarification about the spam laws around the world and how it impacts you, do drop us a link at the Get in Touch with us page.

DISCLAIMER: This set of guidelines only suggest steps to be compliant with the local and global laws that apply to email marketing. In no way do we imply greater deliverability into email inboxes or a guarantee of not getting labelled as spam. Content Spam filters can also block emails from being delivered.

Highlights of the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

  1. Opt in only. Any unsolicited mail is SPAM.
  2. Must have unsubscribe options (such as link or reply to email) and instructions on how to unsubscribe
  3. Must print the postal address of the sender
  4. Unsubscribe requests must be processed within 10 days
  5. Criminal liability. Up to US$250 per message, max US$2 million

Highlights of the Singapore Spam Control Act 2007

  1. Must label unsolicited commercial email in the subject line with <ADV>
  2. Must offer unsubscribe options such as an unsubscribe link
  3. Must be sent in bulk to qualify as Spam. (> 100/hour or >1,000 in 30 day period)
  4. Unsubscribe requests must be processed within 10 days
  5. Must have Singapore link: sender or receiver in Singapore, server or device in Singapore, company in Singapore
  6. Civil Liability. Up to S$25 per message, max $1 million

Other Countries with Anti Spam Legislation

  • Australia
  • Hong Kong
  • Japan

Read more about the legal issues here.

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