CAN-SPAM Act – What Do I Need To Know?

New to e-marketing?  You need to understand and abide by the CAN-SPAM act.  First of all, it’s CAN-SPAM as in “stop spam” rather than “canned spam,” the lunchmeat Monty Python couldn’t live without.  The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that affects every organization that uses email in its operations.  It covers not only bulk email campaigns, but every commercial email message.  A violation is worth $16,000, so you’ll want to understand and abide by the rules.

Think about the email you’re sending.  Messages fall into one of several categories:  commercial, transactional, or other.  Commercial messages sell or advertise something, transactional or relational messages confirm or facilitate an ongoing or past transaction, and messages that fall into the “other” bucket are not commercial, transactional, or relational.  Messages that are primarily commercial are covered by the act. Messages that are primarily relational are exempt from most of the act although they cannot contain misleading or false information.  How does this work for a non-profit organization?

• Asking your constituents for a donation?  Commercial
• Sending an online donor an email receipt for a gift?  Transactional
• Sending last year’s event attendees a save-the-date card by email?  Relational

What about messages that serve dual purposes?  When a message contains a mix of content, the key is your subject line.  If the message’s subject line would lead a recipient to think it’s a commercial message, CAN-SPAM thinks it’s a commercial message too.  Likewise, if the majority of transactional or relational content doesn’t appear at the beginning of the email, you have yourself a commercial message.

Your commercial email messages are in violation of the act if you:

• mislead the recipient about your identify
• use deceptive subject lines
• don’t identify the email as an advertisement
• don’t tell recipients where you are located
• don’t allow recipients to opt out
• don’t honor opt-outs when you receive them

Your email is your responsibility even if a third party sends it on your behalf – make sure your marketers are in compliance.

Donna Caputo is the Director of Consulting Services at Jacobson Consulting Applications, Inc. (JCA)
JCA provides strategic consulting to the world’s leading nonprofits.