Email Marketing Legislation. What does it mean to you?

You are thinking of launching your next email campaign. Great! Email marketing can be a quick way of reaching a large audience. eMarketing keeps you in touch with your customers; it allows you to develop a relationship; people buy from people who they trust; Email marketing gives you quick and measureable results; and , it's a very cost effective way of marketing - you can cut out the expense of postage, stationery, printing and other associated costs. This is all good stuff, however, your email list has to be obtained as well as managed in accordance with the various Spam legislation. You have to get people to opt-in to receive email from you.

 

'Permission Marketing'. The key is to get people to WANT to receive your mailing; to opt-in. You hear about it, but what does it actually mean to YOU? It is illegal to send unsolicited email messages except in limited circumstances. If customers have consented to receiving information from you in the past, i.e. opted in, you can send them information on other things you think they might be interested in. However, you must give these people the option to opt out of receiving any further messages from you.

 

Here are some reasons why you should comply with UK email legislation. Non-compliance could result in a £5,000 maximum fine under the Data Protection Act (per record), 6 figure fines in other EU countries. Unsolicited marketing should not be sent by electronic mail to an individual subscriber unless the subscriber has given his/her consent. Avoid negative PR and keep your customers and prospects happy.

 

As a general guideline you should be good to go if:

• Your contacts opted-in to receive email communications from you. For example, your contacts subscribed on your website to receive your newsletter or e-comms where you explained to them what you'd be contacting them about.
• Your contacts purchased products or services from you in the past within the last 2 years.
• Your contacts handed you their business card at an event, a networking session, or a tradeshow knowing that you would be contacting them. So, if you told the card owner that you would be in touch, you have their permission. However, if you did not state or suggest to them that you would be contacting them, you do not have their permission.
• Your contacts have completed an offline form of communication, for example a survey, or they may have entered a prize draw. You will only be able to contact them if you have in fact explained to them that you would contact them AND they ticked a box indicating that they would like to be contacted.

 

Now on the other hand, you must NOT email them if:

• You have obtained an email list from a third party. For example you were provided an email list by a partner or you may even have purchased a customer list from a bankrupt competitor. Those contacts never gave YOU permission to contact them
• You have collated a contact list from the internet. Just because people have published their contact details online does not mean that they have give YOU permission to send an email campaign to them.
• If you do not have explicit, provable permission to email your contacts, don't.
• Generally, you should not be emailing your contacts who you have not sent something to in the last 2 years. They won't remember giving you permission.

 

You're good to go? Now that you have established what you can and can't do, what content MUST you include in your email? (1) A single-click unsubscribe link that instantly removes the subscriber from your list. Once they unsubscribe, you can never email them again. (2) The name and physical address of the sender. If you're sending an email for your client, you will need to include your client's details instead.

 

Please review the “Guidance for marketers on the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive)” for details on email legislation.

 

Question… if you haven't already got an opted-in email list, what are you going to do about it going forward..? And if you are already running email campaigns, how can you improve your email deliverability? As part of our email marketing article series we are addressing these issues in our next edition.

 

Articles coming soon:

How can I build an opted-in email marketing list?

How can I improve my email deliverability and improve my success rate?

 

If you need any help with your marketing or web design, please do not hesitate to ask, even if it's just some advice you need. Simplicity would be happy to help. Interested to learn how we can help? View our services; or simply contact us to discuss how we can help.

 

Here are some related articles which you might find interesting:

What is e-Marketing? Read this article...

Demystifying email statistics. Read this article...

 

 

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