FTC Rulemaking on CAN SPAM

The FTC announced today they will be publishing clarifications to CAN SPAM in the near future. According to the FTC

The new rule provisions address four topics: (1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender; (2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements; (3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”; and (4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

Once the rules are published, I will be sure to link to them and comment on them here. From the FTC press release, it seems that the rules are reasonably sane and any current mailer following best practices will already be in compliance.
Hat tip: MailChimp

Related Posts

Finding your relevancy

Ken Magill reported today that Responsys has unveiled a tool to measure the relevancy of email marketing programs. This tool is intended to help marketers implement the advice “be more relevant.”

Read More

Blog roundup

Denise Cox has a list of 10 things your signup page should have over on her blog.
The AOL postmaster blog has its first post up talking about bounces.
BeRelevant has a great blog with lots of suggestions email best practices.
Mark Brownlow had a great post this weekon moving the unsubscribe button to the top of your newsletter to make it easy for customers to unsubscribe. The comments are a must read as well, including one commenter that saw the number of ‘this is spam’ hits go down when he moved the unsubscribe link to the top of the email.

Read More

EEC shows how not to send email

The Email Experience Council is the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association. They recently sent out a mailing that demonstrated what not to do when sending email, including:

Read More