Stepping Lightly With Your Email Marketing
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The introduction of email marketing has opened up a whole new door for marketers, but with the convenience comes extra responsibility and regulations. Some companies abuse the privileges of information and access of the internet and indiscriminately send mass emails to individuals who have not agreed. This spam is a serious headache and system administrators work vigorously to deal with and discourage it. The existence of spam makes the lives of legitimate marketers more difficult because consumers often have a hard time distinguishing between junk emails and legitimate ones. Once someone sees a company's email in their inbox they might delete it without a second thought or glance.
Many people have spam filters incorporated in their email in order to protect them from these illegitimate messages. This is also a problem for legitimate email marketers because their emails are often mistaken for spam and are filtered out, never reaching their customer. Along with trying to ensure that their emails are not mistaken for spam, email marketers must also make sure that their email marketing does not violate any of the laws that surround the topic.
The United States created the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act" in 2003, more easily remembered by the clever acronym CAN-SPAM. There is also the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and the Internet service provider's acceptable use policy. email marketers must comply with all of the stipulations outlined in all of these policies since email marketing is an international phenomenon.
CAN-SPAM carries with it an $ 11,000 fine for every violation of spamming every single recipient. The gravity of this punishment has led to the creation of software that helps companies remain within the confines of the law. Permission is the key to avoiding any of these emailing regulations, and email marketing software has features such as offering the option to unsubscribe in just one click. This software also prohibits the importing of lists of customers who have not given permission; any illegally purchased list of email addresses is not allowed to be used.
To protect them against being mistaken for spammers, many companies that use email marketing have created a double opt-in way for customers to subscribe to receive information. This method requires that a person select a particular link and enter a specific code in order to confirm that the individual requesting the information is the actual owner of the email address. The agreement acts as a kind of virtual handshake between the marketer and the recipient, verifying that the customer does indeed want the information. This manual confirmation is the best way for companies to avoid being charged with spamming.
With the combined effort of special software and thorough confirmation methods, companies can utilize the benefits of email marketing. While spam still plagues the internet, these special measures and heavy penalties have alleviated a lot of the abuse. With the decline in spam per capita legitimate email marketers can operate with a little more ease for the benefit of all.
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