CAN-SPAM – Two New Rules YOU Need To Know About
By Anna Johnson on July 7th, 2008Today, July 7, 2008 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) changes to the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM) take effect.
There are two new rules, in particular, for Internet marketers to take note of – yes, they may require you to make some changes to how you market:
1. Unsubscribing needs to be easier
You cannot require an email recipient to do any of the following in order to unsubscribe from your list:
– Pay a fee;
– Provide information other than their email address and opt-out preferences; or
– Do anything more than send a reply email message OR visit ONE web page.
2. Clarification over “forwarding to a friend”
Under the revamped law, any email sent via a web-based referral form is considered to be sent by the person or company that owns the website. In other words, if you encourage people to fill in a form in order to send a referral message to others, YOU – not the referrer – are considered to be the sender.
Now for some good news and bad news.
First, the bad news. Well, it’s not exactly “bad”… but if you provide a reward, incentive or inducement to someone in return for forwarding a message to someone else, then you must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act as if the email was directly sent by you.
So, for example, you must provide a physical address to those who receive such messages and provide them with the ability to opt-out. Presumably, however, if the recipient of the referral email is not actually added to a list, there is no need to provide an opt-out mechanism.
The good news is that if you simply give people the ability to forward a message or send a link to others – and neither are they added to a list nor provided with a reward, incentive or inducement for forwarding such a message, you are not held to such CAN-SPAM requirements.
Of course, this is our understanding of the new laws; this ain’t legal advice and you should consult a qualified attorney!
