The risk in sending commercial emails overseas is not so much from the legislators; it is from the ISPs who have the power to Black List your company. A new email format has been suggested that not only complies to Best Practices it also meets or exceeds the requirements of Can Spam, The Australian Spam Act and the EU Directives.
PRWEB) February 1, 2005 -- Legislators world wide have signaled their intentions to clamp down on spam and that will include businesses that fail to meet the requirements of the various laws. The FTC for example have stated that this year they will be taking action against businesses that fail to include such things as their physical address details.
Variances in Legislation between countries can and do lead to challenges for legitimate eMarketers. In the US the subject line of a commercial email is an issue, in Australia it is not. In Australia, we do not need to include physical address details of the sender within the email, just a link to where those details can be found. Australia and the EU (Generally) have ‘Opt-In Legislation whereas the US has ‘Opt Out. These are differences that could lead to quite serious consequences for Marketers.
'GEF', The Global Email Format, provides an answer. The approach used is to merge Best Practices in eMail Marketing with a set of rules that ‘Meets or Exceeds the legislative requirements of Can Spam, Australian Spam Act and EU Directives. In some cases this leads to a change in the way Australian and EU Marketers would format their emails and in others US Marketers might need to change theirs.
The format looks at each of the standard inclusions in an email such as the 'From', 'To' and 'Subject' lines then adds some more by way of 'Best Practice' and, in order to meet the criteria of 'Meets or Exceeds', the requirements of the different pieces of Legislation.
The other aspects of emails surround the type of links that should be contained within each one. These are not restricted to just an unsubscribe link, there are more things that need to be considered.
In this regard those businesses that have been considering getting into CRM or perhaps upgrading from entry level contact management systems should now take the needs of Compliant International Marketing into account. Increased reliance on systems to manage lists, segmentation, subscribe and unsubscribe functions and more within emails will become part and parcel of CRM even at the entry level.
GEF is seen as the foreruner to a voluntary International eMarketing Code of Practice.
A downloadable White Paper, the first of a series on GEF, is available from the Actif Communications web site:
www.actifcommunications.com/GEF.html
About Actif Communications.
Actif Communications is an Internet and eMarketing resources site that focuses on the needs of small to medium businesses. The company delivers a range of eMarketing and eBusiness workshops, seminars, online tutorials and provides consulting services.
The Author, Gordon Cramer, is a member of the Australian eMarketing Code of Practice Committee and is a practitioner with Professional Certification in eMarketing from the eMarketing Association.
Telephone: +617 5452 7888
Mobile: +61 417 684 377
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