First of all, in case you don’t recall the famous internal mantra of the Bill Clinton 1992 presidential campaign (It’s the economy, stupid), I am not calling anyone bad names. But like James Carville (a Clinton campaign manager), I think this issue is so important and still overlooked, that it doesn’t hurt to use a ‘hit you over the head with it’ type of phrase to emphasize the point.

While content still plays a role in spam determination, your reputation as an email marketer is, in most cases, now more important.  Furthermore, marketers need to realize that establishing and maintaining a good email reputation is as critical as preserving a good credit score.

If you don’t pay your bills for several months, your credit rating will take a hit and you could see credit card companies change your terms, have trouble getting new credit, etc.  You would be in danger of being labeled a credit risk.  Send a lot emails that bounce or have a significant percentage of your recipients report your email as SPAM and your reputation will suffer and you risk being seen as a spammer.  If you are pegged as a spammer, your emails, even if they are legitimate, will likely go into a spam or bulk folder instead of the inbox.  Needless to say, conversions from a spam folder aren’t good.

So, if you aren’t already focusing on your email reputation, what should you do?  More on that in the next post.

The FTC has approved four new rule provisions to the CAN-SPAM act, which created standards for sending commercial email in 2003.  From the FTC press release, the four issues addressed are:

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.

The full text (PDF, 312KB) provides a more detailed explanation of each of the new rules and some additional information including clarification on how ‘Forward To a Friend’ emails should be classified. 

For most marketers, these new provisions won’t have a practical impact on their email programs. 

The one exception might be the first item, which addresses the opt-out process.  An important best practice has been to make the unsubscribe process simple and straightforward, so I don’t except that a lot of marketers will need to change anything.  However, given the continuing importance of the CAN-SPAM act, everyone should review the new provisions to determine what, if any, effect it has on your email marketing programs.