The Anti-SPAM law

The European Union is also passing a law to help prevent SPAM. Their approach is to allow email if there is a previous business relation or opt-in from the user (the new US Feds law is ... ok to SPAM until they ask you to stop or they register their email address with a central opt-out registry). Read an article on the new EU law

While you may be sending legitimate emails, keep in mind that this is a litigious society and there are gold diggers out there. So how can I protect myself you ask....? Use a good emailing tool (see list below) to help you manage double opt-in, unsubscribe requests and logs subscriptions history) and be a good net citizen. The guidelines below should keep you out of trouble.

Premliminary definitions:

Opt-in email

When someone registered to be on a mailing list by either sending an email to the list or filling out a form on a website.

Double Opt-in email

When an email address is sent to the newly registered address requesting that they confirm their subscription before it becomes active. This second approach prevents a person from adding somebody else's email address to an undesirable mailing list.

Basic guidelines

• Never use "harvested" email addresses (automatically harvested on public forums and websites) or automatically generated email addresses (i.e. computer generated educated guess of possible email addresses). In other words, use a list of email addresses that you have not collected youself or obtained through a reputable opt-in/double-opt-in company.
• Use your valid and legitimate business email address in the "From:" field.
• Never use a misleading "Subject:" field.
• In the email (usually at the bottom), provide a clear, simple way for someone to unsubscribe (email, URL). This mechanism MUST must be functioning for a min of 30 days after your last email was sent.
• You MUST stop sending emails within 10 days of receiving an "unsubscribe" message.
• Note: that if you later get another "explicit consent" by the user, you can start sending them email again.
• You must clearly identify that the message is an advertisement or solicitation UNLESS you have prior affirmative consent from the recipient. What this means is: If you send advertisements to a bunch of people who did not ask for it, you must make it clear that it's an advertisement. If you are sending emails to a registered list of users, you don't have to worry about being explicit.
• The email must include a valid physical postal address of the sender.

Not required by law, but good practice:

• Only send email to users who explicitly consented to receive email from you. The safest approach is to use opt-in (preferably double opt-in) email registration method and keep a log of everything.
• Let people know what address they used when subscribing to this list (i.e. I have dozens of email addresses all coming to my account.... which one did I use here since they ask for my address to unsubscribe me!).
• It is preferable to send an individual email to each recipient (as opposed to stuffing hundreds of emails in a "Bcc:" line). This approach helps minimize your chances of the message being stopped by a SPAM filter.
• Do not yell (All caps) in title/body of email (you will trigger spam filters)
• !!! A bunch of !!! marks will also trigger spam filters.

Your ISP an their policies

In short, you may want to contact your ISP and tell them what you want to do: i.e. doing business related mailing list to customers/potential customers using "exclusively" opt-in or double opt-in lists (i.e. not SPAM) and that you will have info at the bottom of your email informing users how to remove themselves from the list etc... Then ask if they have any restrictions against ethical bulk mailing.

If they do, you may need to do one of the following:

1. find another ISP
2. use a server side mailing software (i.e. your email is sent from your server hosting company, where your website resides, which can be different from your ISP). In this case, you would also need to verify with your hosting company about their bulk mailing policy.
3. use an on-line bulk mailing service such as topica.com. this is a bit more expensive but will take care of any ISP problem.

See articles on the US CAN-SPAM law: ( E-Commerce News, ( Crm Daily, AdAge.com, Eweek article on bill, InfoWorld article on bill)

Tools to help you stay out of trouble (with the law)

1-2-ALL Nice and simple. Runs on your server, not your desktop PC. Open tracking capabilities and other powerful features. Mailing list maintenance (unsubscribe/subscribe etc...) Manage bounce emails (dead addresses) 30 days money back guarantee	1-2-All
Postmaster Express The friendliest package and very powerful. Does all your usual import/export/subscription management etc... The Gold Package For Small Businesses $299 The Advanced User Package $199 The difference between the two packages is the $299 one has a 30 days phone support and two eBooks bundled with it "How to Start Your Own Traffic Virus." TWO online marketing courses by email. Both packages have a free email support for life and a 30 days money back. You can download a free demo version of the software.	Postmaster Express
Gammadyne mailer Very powerful. Not to expensive ($149). Not for the faint of heart. More geared toward techie type folks. You can download a free demo version of the software.	Gammadyne
MailWorks pro Requires technical knowledge because it runs on the server side unlike all the others which run on your PC. (i.e. written in PHP/mysql works on Apache). Cost: $99 You can see an on-line demo of the software.	MailWorks Pro