About 3-4 years ago, spam became such an issue that Congress stepped in.
One reason was because states were starting to pass laws – and they didn’t necessarily agree with each other. You can imagine what it would have been like with 50 states having different rules, since email is by its nature, national or international!
The result was the CAN-SPAM act. Kind of a funny name, since in a way it is what it says: It tells you how you can legally send spam.
It is vital to know the rules if you are sending commercial emails, since this is a real, live, Federal law – it even has criminal penalties for violation. You can go to jail (of course only the worst offenders get that).
Contrary to what some people think, it is NOT illegal under this law to send unsolicited commercial email (it is in violation of Internet Service Providers’ terms of service. But that is another story).
You can send all the unsolicited email you want without breaking the law, as long as you follow a few simple rules. I am not a lawyer, but this is a good general summary of the rules:
- You can’t falsify sending email addresses or otherwise try to pass yourself off as someone else.
- You have to include your actual company name and address (can be a PO Box).
- You need to include some kind of notice that this is advertising or a solicitation of some sort, if it is.
- You have to provide a simple, easy way for people to request to be taken off your list. You can’t require them to provide anything more than their email address in order to be unsubscribed.
- You have to remove people from the list within 10 days or your being notified.
That’s it.
These rules DO apply to non-profit organizations. If email is being sent by a third party, the rules apply to both the third party and the organization for whom the email is being sent.
Simple enough? So make sure you follow these rules (Note: If you use any of various subscription emailing services such as Constant Contact, iContact or Mail Chimp, compliance is automatically taken care of).
