Recently I had an unpleasant experience with a quilting retailer. My personal email address ended up on a list that I did not join. I have never had any business dealings with this company and I suspect my address was harvested from a two-year-old trade show list of attendees.
When I asked politely for her to unsubscribe me because I hadn’t signed up for her list, she replied that I had to go to her website to unsubscribe myself, and then accused me first of lying about not signing up for her list and then of trying to use other peoples’ problems to increase my own web design business.
Obviously this person has some serious customer service issues, but let’s deal only with the email debacle.
Was it Spam?
The unfortunately named 2003 CAN-SPAM Act (shouldn’t it be “can’t spam?”), which regulates commercial email sent and received within the US, includes a checklist of acceptable practices for transactional and commercial emails. This one violated almost every single requirement of the law.
1. I had never visited the retailer’s website and did not sign up for the email notification.
2. She was sending these emails through her blog software. As a result, there was no link to unsubscribe within the email itself, nor was there a notice to unsubscribe by reply email or other action.
3. The blog software does not use a “double opt-in” system. You’ve probably experienced a double opt-in — you enter your email address and your name on a website form. Then you get an email that says something like “You’re almost there!” and a link that must be clicked to confirm your subscription.
There was absolutely no notification that I had been added to this list, so I was unaware of it until I received the newsletter email.
4. The law requires that the mailing list owner promptly remove anyone who requests to be removed from the list. This can be accomplished either by an unsubscribe link within the email itself or by manual removal when the request is submitted by reply email. Since I replied to the email with a request to be removed, the responsibility was hers to remove my name and email from her database.
5. The Act permits mail list owners to manually add addresses of persons who have done business with the company within the past 24 months. I have never done business with this company.
6. The Act also requires the sender to include a postal address (P O box is fine) and clear instructions on how to opt out of any further emails from the sender. This email contained neither.
7. The Act also specifically forbids “harvesting” of email addresses or obtaining the email addresses from a third party. Because of the address used to send this email to me, I strongly suspect that someone at the company typed in a list of names from a trade show I attended in 2007 — a trade show at which I had no personal contact with the company.
When you import a list of names to your campaign list, most email service providers require that you specify where you got the names and tell you what kinds of lists are acceptable and which are not.
Permission confirmation rules from Campaign Monitor: Click image for larger version.
To sum up: Yes, it was spam.
The email and the responses that I received from this company were in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act on several counts and legally fall under the definition of spam. I don’t plan to report it unless the unwanted emails continue, but the penalties are stiff:
Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, and more than one person may be held responsible for violations. For example, both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that originated the message may be legally responsible.
What can you do to comply with the Act?
Make certain that you have specific permission from the person before you add their name to your list. If you attend trade shows and collect names, make sure you clearly label your signup sheets with “Sign up for our newsletter!” or a similar phrase.
Set up a double opt-in system, so that a third person can’t add a name to your list without notifying the one who was added.
Make sure that every email you send contains your mailing address and an easy way for the recipient to unsubscribe.
And the best advice I can offer — don’t annoy your potential customers!
