New CAN-SPAM rules are out! Keep it from costing you all the money you’re saving by being a good Frugal Marketer. June 18, 2008

The new CAN-SPAM rules have come out, and here they are in plain English.

1) POSTAL ADDRESS – Valid Physical Address can include a PO box or Mail Stop, as long as the USPS recognizes it. This might be an obvious one but it used to be a gray area, now it’s not.

2) PERSON is now defined not just as a human, it can also be a corporation, non-profit, etc. This is who is responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance when sending a commercial email. So business entities, as well as regular folks are now responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance in regards to all commercial email they send.

3) DESIGNATED SENDER RULE - This applies to you if you include any advertising or partners in an email. If you don’t include your company name “in the email” with a link to access your site, your advertisers are responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance even if your name is in the From Label. This mainly applies to companies who send coupons or offers on behalf their partners.

For example: Company A sends an email to their list with a special offer from Company B. In the email, Company A must have some information that advertises their own service, and some way for the recipients to access their site.

If Company A does not include some kind of ad for their own company inside the email, then Company B being advertised within the email would be responsible for all CAN-SPAM compliance.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you’re advertising in another company’s email marketing campaign, make sure they put something about their services with a link to their site. You don’t want to be on the hook for their CAN-SPAM compliance.

Also, CAN SPAM states (again) that all commercial emails:

• Must have a working reply-to address or other web based opt-out mechanism (which must also be conspicuous) for the company listed in the From Label
• Can’t be false or misleading
• Can have no deceptive subject lines
• Must comply with the SEXUALLY EXPLICIT label

4) UNSUBSCRIBE – Unsubscribes must not be complicated, nor can it require some kind of purchase, or taking a survey. The only thing you are allowed to ask for in an unsubscribe is an email address and the user’s email preferences.

As usual we’ll keep you informed on most of the CAN SPAM updates, just be sure you follow the simple the rules above and you’ll be AOK.

Frugal Resource! Collect names with an autoresponder. June 5, 2008

Let’s say you’d like to find out how many people in a certain demographic–let’s say parents, for this example–are interested in your type of service. One way to find out is to offer a free report on something that relates to your service, and to offer it via autoresponder.

What this means is, your website visitor will have to enter their name and email address to get the report. The report will then be automatically emailed to them, with no interference from you.

Email Marketing Done Right April 15, 2008

from MarketingProfs.com

Email marketers must keep in mind that consumers who decide to opt in to the brand’s email channel is likely a fan of that brand. Do not lose those consumers by making the following mistakes.

Information Overload

Is it really necessary to send four emails each week about the latest sale? Think long and hard about the number of touch points. Retailers are notorious for overdoing it.

I once asked the director of CRM at a national retailer why the brand is not more list-frequency conscious. His reply was that email is so cheap that for them no matter how much they burn their list it’s still profitable to maintain such frequent contact with their entire database.

That might be so, but they programmed the majority of their consumers to shop with their weekly email coupon in hand, which has effectively devalued the brand and caused a high rate of consumers opt-outs.