Email Marketing is one of the most cost-effective and highly valuable tools in reaching your direct customers, but, if you are not careful you might annoy your customers or your emails could get caught in the spam filters that could even lead to worse – trouble with the law, spell P-E-N-A-L-T-Y!
GoEmail will guide you on how to maximise your marketing efforts and opportunities with these email compliance guidelines:
Australia’s Laws on Email Marketing
Australia has strict laws and guidelines around the commercial use of email marketing.
These laws are in place to protect consumers from receiving unsolicited emails, also known as spam. Email marketers must comply with these laws and it’s worth noting they carry significant fines if broken. It is important to use of credible and legitimate email marketing service provider, like GoEmail, will ensure you are following this rules.
Ensuring Spam Compliance
If your business uses any form of e-marketing, including email, SMS (text message), MMS (image-based text messages) or instant messaging, you must understand and meet the following checklist of requirements.
PERMISSION
You must receive permission from people to send them emails. There are two types of permission:
Expressed Permission
This means someone has specifically given your permission to email them. For example, they may have subscribed via a form on your website or given you their email address during the purchase process.
Implied/Inferred Permission
This is a slightly greyer area and covers anyone who you have an existing business relationship with, for example, a current customer or donor.
IDENTIFICATION
You must always identify who the email is from, you must include contact information, including your business address in every promotional email you send, this can be a PO Box or your mailing address. Providing this information you will build a level of trust with your customers.
UNSUBSCRIBE OPTION
Your email must contain a functional ‘unsubscribe’ facility to allow the recipient to opt out from receiving messages from that source in the future. To comply with CAN-SPAM laws, unsubscribe requests must be honoured within 10 working days.
ACCURATE HEADER INFORMATION
Header information includes your – From name, subject line and reply-to address. This information must clear and not be misleading.
DISCLOSURE OF ADVERTISING PURPOSE
The main purpose is to prevent businesses deceiving their subscribers into believing the email is from a person rather than a brand or company.
How does GoEmail help you with spam compliance?
GoEmail provides a range of features that give peace of mind when it comes to your legal requirements with spam.
GoEmail system has a number of features that help ensure you’re compliant:
Permission
GoEmail provides various tools to help you collect expressed permission. Webforms to help you capture and record expressed consent from your subscribers. Autoresponders for double opt in processes, which is best practice on the matter of gaining permission.
Identification
Any email created in GoEmail will automatically contain your company name and address by default.
Unsubscribe options
GoEmail includes an automated unsubscribe facility by default in all of your email messages. The feature includes, One click unsubscribe function and Removes previous unsubscribes upon upload.