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Understanding CAN-SPAM
A Primer on the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003" A.K.A the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

As you may be aware, the first national anti-spam act - CAN-SPAM - was passed, signed in to law and went into effect January 1, 2004.

Most industry observers will tell you that the law has had little impact on the most insidious spammers. A quick check of your email inbox may well show this is true. The volume of spam you are receiving is the same or even greater than pre-CAN-SPAM. The fact of the matter is, and contrary to popular belief, the law was not intended to ban spam only provide a framework for e-mailers to follow that would eliminate the most grievous practices and provide email recipients an easy out from unwanted, no longer wanted or unsolicited commercial email (a.k.a UCE, a.k.a. spam).

So who's complying with CAN-SPAM? The same on-shore, legitimate marketers that were following email marketing best practices - permission-based, easy unsubscribe, etc. - before the law went into effect and continue to afterwards.

As mentioned above, CAN-SPAM does not forbid spam or UCE in fact it allows it as long as the following guidelines are followed (I'm not a lawyer and this article is not to be considered a legal opinion. We recommend you download - click here - the act itself and seek legal counsel as necessary and prudent for your situation):

1. Don't fake or 'spoof' your e-mail's origin. This is a practice whereby illegitimate marketers make their messages appear to be from someone else.

2. Tell it like it is, i.e., don't use deceptive subject lines.

3. Include a clearly apparent and working unsubscribe mechanism (Internet based) and honor all unsubscribe requests within 10 days of receipt.

4. Include a physical address in your emails.

5. If you're using your email to sell goods or services as opposed to say, relationship or informational purposes, then your message must state in some obvious fashion that it is a solicitation or ad. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to state this in the subject line. Also, if you've received permission (which you should have) to email the recipient it's not necessary to make this statement.

There are some aggravated offenses including,

• address harvesting (using a 'bot' to crawl web sites looking for email addresses)

• deceptive and/or unauthorized message relays or broadcast, for instance, 'slaving' another machine and using it to send spam so as to hide the spam's true origin.

• dictionary assaults; similar to predictive dialing where a computer sends email to every possible email address permutation of email services such as Yahoo, AOL or HotMail. (e.g. abc@xyz.com; abd@xyz.com; abe@xyz.com, etc.).

That's pretty much it. Oh sure there's more and you definitely understand the civil (big fines) and criminal (jail time) penalties prescribed under the law. Again, I encourage you to download the act and read the whole thing but by and large it's not a hard law to comply with. In fact, by superceding individual state laws, many which were much more onerous in scope and impact, it provides what I believe to be an acceptable legislative framework for legitimate email marketing.

Good email marketers won't find this a hard law to live with but the penalties for not complying are pretty stiff so be sure that you stay on the right side of the law. Probably the most important provision is that an 'unsubscribe' is an 'unsubscribe' and needs to be honored throughout the organization - be sure you maintain a centralized 'suppression' list. Also, permission based email is treated differently than non-permission mail so be sure and keep good records of when and how permission was granted.

And if you want an example of how not to comply, read this cautionary tale of how one man's 'savvy' (and old school) marketing efforts result in another man's spam.

Contact GeMSolv at info@gemsolv.com if you'd like us to audit your email marketing procedures for compliance. Also be sure to check out the following resources.

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