Is Email Marketing Spam?

One of the most common opinions of Email Marketing is that is spam. This can be true in some instances if you don’t follow a few simple rules when promoting your business through email.

Even though there are some that will use it unlawfully, the concept of Email Marketing is that it is permission based. In other words people ‘opt-in’, ‘subscribe’, ‘join’ or consent to receive information or promotions from you via email.

There are certainly some grey areas when it comes to ‘consent’ or ‘opt-in’, The most common one we are asked is a scenario like: “I was at a networking function and collected a load of business cards, can I add these people to my email list?”

Well as opposed to giving my own opinion here, it’s probably best to clarify the 3 steps to make sure that your email marketing is not spam, as defined in the Anti-Spam Act 2003:

1) Consent – You must have consent to distribute email marketing to your contacts. This can be ‘expressed’ or ‘inferred’ consent

“This may be express consent from the person you wish to contact – a direct indication that it is okay to send the message, or messages of that nature.

It is also possible to infer consent based on a business or other relationship with the person, and their conduct.” – Anti-Spam Act 2003 – A Practical Guide for Business

2) Indentify – make it clear who you are when you send your messages.

“Your commercial messages should always contain clear and accurate identification of who is responsible for sending the message, and how they can be contacted. It is important for people to know who is contacting them, and how they can get in touch in return. This will generally be the organisation that authorises the sending of the message, rather than the name of the person who actually hits the “send” button. Identification details that are provided must be reasonably likely to be accurate for a period of 30 days after the message is sent. This would be a consideration if the business was about to change address.” – Anti-Spam Act 2003 – A Practical Guide for Business

3) Unsubscribe – provide people the option to ‘opt-out’ of receiving future messages from you.

“Your commercial messages should contain an unsubscribe facility, allowing people to indicate that such messages should not be sent to them in future. All commercial electronic messages must contain a functional unsubscribe facility, allowing people to opt-out from receiving future messages. Such a request must be honoured.” – Anti-Spam Act 2003 – A Practical Guide for Business

Step 1 is really up to your discretion when dealing with contacts you have met in person or otherwise. The best form of ‘opt-in’ is to have a subscription form on your website where your contact elects to join your list and can confirm their request.

Step 2 is easy covered by detailing your company & contact information in an email signature or enewsletter template and have it standard in every email that you send.

Step 3 is a bit more difficult if you are using a program like Outlook to manage your email list. You might have seen in many mail outs – “to unsubscribe to this list please reply to this email with unsubscribe in the subject line”. Well you could take that approach, but if you don’t action that request within 5 days then you are in breach of the anti-spam laws. A by far easier process is to use an anti-spam complaint email marketing software that can process your unsubscribes automatically as well as offer you a bunch of other great email marketing features.

Read more about our email marketing services or visit www.emailmarketer.com.au to try email marketing for yourself.

Download your own copy of the Anti-Spam Act 2003 – Practical Guide for Business