Relevant Interruptions

With all the SPAM blockers on the Internet, it's difficult to impossible for a company to communicate with their customers and potential customers using an internal email system. No one wants SPAM in their inbox. The ISP's don't want SPAM filling up their hard drives either. However, the efforts ISP's have taken to reduce this tremendous overhead on their servers blocks a lot of email from unsophisticated email systems. For instance, if an ISP receives a number of emails from the same sender in a short period of time they will block the rest from coming in. Most internal systems are not built to handle this throttled delivery thus a large portion of the emails sent get blocked.

It will take several years before better standards and policies are put into place. The Federal Trade Commission is getting serious. They have recently increased the penatly for sending a SPAM email to $11,000 per incident. New additions are being made from time-to-time but here are the current guidelines to follow:

• The email message must not have misleading header information
• The message must not have a misleading subject line
• The message must come from a functioning return email address
• Senders must remove all unsubscribe requests within 10 business days
• Commmercial email must display the postal address of the sender
• Any unsolicited emails must clearly identify that it's an advertising message
• The recipient must have the opportunity to decline further emails
• The sender is defined as the entity represented in the from field of the email
• You can not require the recipient to log in to a private Web site in order to unsubscribe

Obviously, we handle this for all of our clients. Most feel email is too important as a messaging vehicle to their customers and potential customers to risk being blocked. Not to mention not having to worry about an $11,000 fine per email if you are found guilty of any of the policies within the CAN-SPAM Act. The cost of a delivered email is much less than a direct mail piece if you want to put it into perspective. The times have changed and one thing you can count on is that they'll continue to change. It's our full-time job and it takes a lot for us to keep up with it.