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5 Tips To Make Sure You Don’t End Up An Accidental Spammer

Guest post by: Michael Smyth

Article Overview: The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007has only caught one victim – Lance Atkinson who in December 2008 was fined NZ$110,000 for being part of an “international spam email operation” (NZ Herald 23 December 2008). But does that mean that a NZ business that isn’t part of such an operation can safely ignore it? The answer is no, because people’s tolerance of spam is ever decreasing and with that there is an expectation that legitimate businesses will have email policies in place which comply with the Act. Not to have one exposes you to prosecution but perhaps more importantly could seriously damage your reputation in the marketplace.

5 Tips To Make Sure You Don’t End Up An Accidental Spammer

How do you comply?

There are four basic things which businesses need to do if they are going to send promotional emails or text messages:

1. Have consent from the recipient to send the email;

2. Identify yourself as the sender by name and postal address;

3. Make sure all your promotional emails have an unsubscribe link;

4. Process any unsubscribe requests promptly.

The last three of these rules are pretty easy to comply with providing you have a system in place. The danger in not having a system in place is that you forget to comply. Forgetfulness causes rage amongst the recipient of the email and your reputation starts to go down the gurgler. The best way to avoid this is to use a reputable auto-responder or managed email service. Then everything happens automatically for you and you don’t need to remember to comply. So that just leaves us with the problem of consent...

Do you really have consent?

The Act prescribes that you are deemed guilty unless you can prove you have consent. Again, using an auto-responder or managed email service helps if your subscribers are collected from a web-form which is part and parcel of that service. Your auto-responder service will have the records of your subscriber opting in. Difficulties arise with purchased lists, ex-customers, subscribers who have opted in to something else, and word of mouth referrals.

With purchased lists you need some written reassurance from the organisation supplying the list that the email addresses have been collated lawfully. If you don’t have this, then you won’t be able to prove consent if ever challenged about it. Since you can never be completely sure about this, purchased lists should be avoided. Ex-customers are another problem unless you have something in your terms of business which says that you can continue to send promotional material even after they cease to be active customers. Also beware someone who buys something online doesn’t necessarily consent to receive promotional material unless they have separately opted in. And finally, if you receive a word of mouth referral and make contact by email, always get that person’s consent before sending any promotional material.

Tips to make sure you don’t end up an accidental spammer

So here are 5 practical tips to keep your reputation intact and make sure you don’t get prosecuted:

1. Use a reputable auto-responder or managed email service for your promotional emails;

2. Beware purchased databases and if you do buy one, make sure you get written reassurance that the database is lawful;

3. Get consent to send promotional emails in your terms of business;

4. If in doubt whether your database is clean, send a simply email asking whether your subscribers want to remain on your list;

5. Have a policy in place in your work to make sure your staff comply with the Act.

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Article Tags: email policies, spam email, spammer, unsolicited electronic messages



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