Email Marketing is still the most cost effective way to market to known prospects, especially with the advent of social media marketing. But therein lies the secret, to ‘known prospects’. You have to have permission to email, SPAM is serious business, with serious consequences.

If you have just recently started email marketing, either for yourself, or on behalf of a client, or even your boss, who says “We are not spammers, so we do not have worry about anti-spam laws”. Just print out this guide and hand it to them or slip it onto their desk.

Do NOT send emails to a purchased list and never dump your address book into your emails subscriber list.

Do NOT join a networking group and just spam the whole group. If you’re an actual member of the group, my recommendation is have an open conversation with the group. Ask for permission from your actual group members, it’s all about relationship. It is one way you can all keep up to date with what is happening within each others business. One way to ‘stay up to date’.

At open networking events, you need to ask permission virtually on a meet and greet basis.

What I personally do when I meet people at open networking events is to literally say “I will send you an email so we have a digital connection, is that ok?”

When I send them that email, it has a statement saying I will send them my regular updates, and if the updates are not adding value then simply unsubscribe, I won’t cry much .

My system automatically adds them to my CRM, and I manually tag them suitably.

While this is all common sense, there are subtle mistakes that will also get you into trouble. Whether it is simple human error that forgets to include a physical mailing address in your footer or the innocently forgetting to not have an ‘unsubscribe’ button in your email.

This guide will show you how some small players, and some of the big boys have had to cough up huge amounts for seemingly harmless mistakes.

Some Rules & Regulations

There a quite a few guidelines and laws that will need to be followed when sending an email. Sometimes they are complicated, and they change often. Stay on top of these rules and regulations and keep up with the changes. If you are ever in doubt, consult a professional digital marketer you trust, or a lawyer.

Understand Anti-Spam Laws

Reading the Anti-Spam act for each of the countries you are sending to is the best place to begin. The first step to sending out a clean campaign is making sure that you understand this landmark act of 2003. Learning these rules will determine whether you are liable for prosecution.

ISPs (Internet Service Providers) Have Rules, Too

What? More rules? Unfortunately, yes. The rules do not end with Anti-Spam laws. When sending out a large email campaign, if you’re sending via your ISP email address, you will need to ensure that your campaign abides by the rules set out by the major ISPs.

Know Where Your Email is Going

Spam laws can change depending on the country (and sometimes States) you are sending the emails to. So, for example, sending an email from Australia to the United States, then you will have to abide by different regulations.

So, if you are going to send emails outside of your State or Country, make sure you know the rules and regulations of where you are sending your emails to or consult a lawyer who does.

A Few Notable Spam Lawsuits

Are you thinking “It’s just an email, what’s the worst that can happen?” Below is a list on email marketing related lawsuits, they may surprise you.

Do Not Rely on Inferred Consent

Lawsuit: Clarity 1 and Wayne Mansield, $4.5 Million Dollars and $1 Million Dollars

“Since the commencement of the Spam Act in April 2004, the company Clarity1 and its director Wayne Mansfield were responsible for sending out in excess of 213 million commercial electronic messages advertising his business, operating under the trading names of Business Seminars Australia and Maverick Partnership. The ACMA’s investigation of Clarity1 and its director Wayne Mansfield resulted in the matter being heard by the Federal Court in Perth. On 13 April 2006, Justice Nicholson found that both Clarity1 and Mr Mansfield were in breach of the Spam Act for both sending unsolicited commercial electronic messages, and for using harvested address lists.

A defence raised in this case was that the sender relied upon inferred consent having obtained email addresses prior to the commencement of the Act and given the email recipients the opportunity to withdraw their consent. This defence was dismissed by the court, which found that the ‘silence’ or non-response of the email recipients did not provide a basis for consent under the Spam Act.

What can be learnt: Harvested email addresses can get you into trouble.  Always make sure you have consent.

When People Withdraw Consent … Stop Sending SMS!

Lawsuit: TPG Internet Pty Limited, $360,000

“TPG Internet Pty Limited (TPG Internet) has paid a $360,000 infringement notice following an Australian Communications and Media Authority investigation into breaches of the Spam Act 2003 (the Act). The ACMA investigation followed complaints from consumers that they had unsubscribed from receiving commercial electronic messages from TPG Internet but continued to receive such messages. The ACMA identified that TPG’s systems were not properly processing unsubscribe requests during April 2017. This meant that TPG contravened subsection 16(1) of the Act by sending SMS commercial electronic messages to consumers who had withdrawn their consent by unsubscribing.”

What can be learnt: It’s not ok to turn a blind eye to your systems.  You need to keep a check on them on a regular basis, so these kinds of things don’t happen to you.

Make Sure You Get Consent First

Lawsuit: ACMA nets Web 1000 for Spam Act Breaches, Formal Warning

“Mr Darren James, trading as the online marketing business Web 1000, has been given a formal warning by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for breaching the Spam Act (the Act). An ACMA investigation found Mr James sent marketing emails without the consent of the recipients. He claimed his marketing database had been built from several marketing lists he had bought from third parties, and from enquiries sent to Web 1000’s websites. However, Mr James had kept no evidence or supporting records to prove that recipients had consented to receiving his marketing emails.”

What can be learnt: It’s always best to build your own list and get confirmed consent. Buying lists can be dangerous. Always keep good records of consent received. This should be easy with your autoresponder software if you build your own list.

Don’t Think You Won’t Get Caught

Lawsuit:  Gray’s Online Fined Record $165,000 For Spam

“Grays sent messages without an opt-out facility and to some people who had previously withdrawn their consent to receiving marketing messages, the regulator said. Julia Cornwell McKean, manager of the ACMA’s Unsolicited Communications and Compliance section, said GraysOnline sent the email without an “unsubscribe” link to 700,000 Australians. Further, about 300,000 were sent to people who had previously withdrawn consent from receiving Grays emails, McKean said.“

What can be learnt: Make doubly sure your emails comply with the Spam Act.  One wrong decision can cost you thousands.

Innocent, Simple Mistakes Can Be Costly

 Lawsuit: Kodak Imaging Network, $32,000

 “The Federal Trade Commission has charged two internet marketers with violating the CAN-SPAM Act by failing to offer an opt-out method or honour consumers’ right to opt out of receiving future marketing mailings within 10 days of making the request. One marketer also failed to include a valid physical postal address, which also is required by the CAN-SPAM Act.”

What can be learnt: Innocent mistakes can be costly. It’s been said that the Kodak incident was an accident, where someone mistakenly sent a campaign before it was complete with unsubscribe links and postal address.

Links are Safer Than “Reply To” Unsubscribes

Lawsuit: YesMail, $50,000

 “The FTC’s complaint alleges that Yesmail’s spam filtering software filtered out certain ‘reply to’ unsubscribe requests from recipients as ‘spam,’ which resulted in Yesmail failing to honor unsubscribe requests by sending thousands of commercial e-mail messages to recipients more than 10 business days after their requests.”

What can be learnt: Using the “reply-to us and we’ll remove you” method is legal, but if those replies get accidentally deleted by your company’s spam filter,you could get sued. Have you ever seen a legit email get flagged by your company’s spam filter? It happens all the time. Safer to use a link that instantly removes people from your list.

 Creative Subject Lines Can Be Deceptive

 Lawsuit: Jumpstart, $900,000

 “’These defendants intentionally used personal messages as a cover-up for commercial messages,’ said Lydia Parnes, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. ‘Deceptive subject lines and headers not only violate the CAN-SPAM Act, but also consumer trust.’”

What can be learnt: In your effort to “get the sale” and make people open your emails, it’s important to not get overly-creative with your subject lines to the point of deception.

 Your Third Parties are Your Responsibility

 Lawsuit: Optin Global, $475,000

 “In April 2005, the FTC and the Attorney General of California charged that the defendants used third-party affiliates or ‘button pushers’ to send spam hawking mortgage loans and other products and services.”

What can be learnt: Do you use third party affiliate marketers to sell your product? Do you closely monitor how they send and collect email addresses?

Free Can Be Expensive

Lawsuit: ValueClick, $2.9 million

 “According to the FTC, ValueClick subsidiary Hi-Speed Media used deceptive e-mails, banner ads, and pop-ups to drive consumers to its Web sites. The e-mails and online ads claimed that consumers were eligible for ‘free’ gifts, including laptops, iPods, and high-value gift cards…”

What can be learnt: Nothing sells like free. But are there any catches to your offer? If so, using “free” in your subject line might be seen as deceptive.

Here are some useful links to help you learn more about your responsibilities as a business owner.

ACMA

https://www.acma.gov.au/

Anti-Spam Regulations

https://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam

All About SPAM

https://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam/Ensuring-you-dont-spam/understanding-spam-ensuring-you-dont-spam-i-acma

Consent

https://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam/Ensuring-you-dont-spam/spam-consent-ensuring-you-dont-spam-i-acma

Inferred Consent

https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/spam-inferred-consent-and-conspicuous-publications

Mandatory Unsubscribe

https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/spam-inferred-consent-and-conspicuous-publications

Sender Identification

https://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam/Ensuring-you-dont-spam/sender-identification-ensuring-you-dont-spam-i-acma

Sure, you can send an HTML email to a few friends every now and then, but not to your entire customer list.

Here’s why…

6 important reasons not to send bulk email directly from your own computer :

• If you send too many emails from your own computer, your Internet Service Provider will think you’re a spammer, and will most likely block you. It depends on your ISP, but this usually happens once your list approaches around 1,000 recipients or so.
• If you send attachments with your email, you’ll inevitably run into bandwidth limit issues with your ISP. They’ll charge you more.
• Send emails to thousands of recipients, and you’ll get all the bounce backs and auto replies from them. Will you be able to manually process them? Hard bounces should be removed from your list immediately, or your email address will be blacklisted by ISPs. Soft bounces should be retried a couple more times before removing them.
• According to the CAN-SPAM law, if someone requests to be removed from your list, you must do so within 10 business days. Most people who send their emails from their desktop computers don’t have scripts to help them automatically process unsubscribe requests. They simply ask people to “reply with unsubscribe in the subject line.” That’s prone to mistakes, and that’s prone to a CAN-SPAM lawsuit from the FTC.
• When do-it-yourselfers send email to their customers with Microsoft Outlook, they usually put their entire customer email list into the CC: field. Yikes. All it takes is for one customer to click “reply-to-all” then all heck breaks loose. Thousands of emails will be sent accidentally causing more confusion and upsetting your customers even more.
• Outlook and other desktop email applications don’t come with tracking tools to show you how many people opened and clicked your campaigns.

A far better solution is to use a software package like Smart Email. It also has Client Relationship Management functions so you can keep track of all your leads, prospects and clients.

List building can be one of the toughest and most arduous tasks in business building.

Let’s say you’re at a function and you meet some great prospects. You know that they are perfect candidates for your stuff, even if it’s not right now, but when they are ready you want them to think of you first. Right!

You also know that unless they are hearing from you on a regular basis then you’re not “positioning” yourself how you could or even should. And to charge that premium rate that you deserve, you need to be in that “prime position”! Do I hear an “Amen” to that?

How many times have we heard that the money is in the “list” so we design our website to do that, have all the name capture stuff, the right double-opt in form protocols. Have to abide by the Spam rules and regulations right?

That’s great for your online visitors but what if you’re out networking?

Having the right opt in forms, auto-responders and email newsletter is a must for every serious professional and their website but how do you get these networking contacts into the same email list building stuff when you’re out and about? How do you overcome this issue?

I have tried it all when I’m at a function or even meetings like BNI (Business Network International) and the like.

You hand them your business card and say something like “Oh, go to my site and click on the big blue button and I’ll send you my Free Report.” And they never do!

So then you try signing them up yourself and say “I’ll send you my Free Report and all you need to do is to click on the confirmation email you’ll get”. And they never do!

Yes, you can add them into ACT or Outlook and even create contact groups but you’d still prefer them in that one list where you can manage them easily without it becoming a huge CRM (Client Relationship Management) drama.

What about an email marketing system designed from the ground up with the professional in mind! Awesome!

Solution! – Smart Email Marketing! Why is it awesome?

Because you can over ride the double opt in process is why! Do I recommend that for your online stuff? Absolutely not, you’d have to have rocks in your head.

BUT IMAGINE THIS! You can now say “Look, I have some info that will address that exact issue plus I have some other stuff coming out soon which I really don’t want you to miss out on. I’ll get that to you this afternoon. Is that soon enough?” and you grab their business card … or everyone in the group’s business cards!

You get back to your office, open up your Smart Email System and enter all their details and hit “send” and the auto-responder sequence begins, plus now they’re automatically in your newsletter list too. But this is where it gets even sexier – no other email marketing software will let you “log an event” so you can actually record that you met them in person and they said yes to your stuff and you did a manual entry.

Talk about guard your butt in these contentious times. It really doesn’t get any better than this. Here’s a short list of just some of the other sexy features:

• Completely browser based (You manage it from wherever you are)
• No per email fees
• No list size limits or fees
• Dozens of built-in templates
• Step-by-step campaign wizard
• Custom fields for personalization
• Unlimited autoresponders
• Split test email campaigns
• Powerful, automated triggers
• Full campaign statistics
• Google Analytics integration
• Automated bounced email processing
• Full WYSIWYG campaign editing
• Easily import/export contacts
• Pause and resume sending
• Automatic event logging
• Built-in CRM functionality
• Google Calendar integration
• RSS email campaign archive

Here’s what Josh Williams of www.AdsOnVids.com.au fame said only last week…

So what’s holding you back on getting serious about building your business? You know the money is in the list and with a Free Trial valued at $49.50 plus a coaching call with me! It’s a no brainer really!

I’m only offering 3 Free Trails for September so call NOW To Reserve Your Spot! Like Right NOW! (Why only 3 Free Trials?  – because I will actually guide you through how to get started, as in me personally and I’m very busy – I’m writing this at 9.10 on a Monday night!)

You can either call me on 0413 733 272 or Book My Smart Email Trial NOW!

Or you can wait until October! And only then if you’re lucky and quick! Don’t miss out!

Frequency and subscription

• Never send an email to someone that won’t be expecting to get an email from you. Make sure all your sign ups are clear and are double opt in
• Make sure you regularly (7 or 8 days after every send to allow for delivery attempts to non existent domains) remove emails from your list that are bouncing or you may end up sending to spam traps
• Send a smaller email weekly rather than a large one monthly. This will allow you to keep your list more up to date and will keep your newsletters as something expected to your users and less likely to be marked as spam. Smaller emails are also easier for your customers to skim amongst their other emails.
• Always include an unsubscribe link in your emails
• Test and make sure the unsubscribe link actually works. If the unsubscribe returns an error they may just mark you as junk instead of letting you know it’s broken
• Never try to hide who the email is coming from
• Make sure who the email is coming from is going to be who the subscribers expects it to be coming from
• Make the unsubscribe process easier than the subscribe process

Email content and design

• A pretty email is nice to look at but the most important thing is getting your information to your subscriber so don’t get too fancy with the design. Lots of design elements will get stripped out by mail clients and Outlook 2007 will display hardly any of them
• Don’t use spam like words and phrases in your email
• If you include a text part (and you should) be sure to have the content of that be a true text representation of the text in the html version
• Don’t include too many images in your email (1-2 per email should suffice) or some filters will flag it
• Don’t use a similar colour for your text as the background it is on (e.g. medium gray text on light gray background) or some filters will see that as trying to hide text
• Don’t use images or send attachments that are too large. 300Kb should be the absolute max size of the email so be sure to make sure the total for images and attachments comes in well under that (adding a file to an email will increase the size by about 30% just in encoding it) so you need to take that into consideration too
• Make sure the content of the email is what the subscriber signed up to receive. Don’t send them emails about sprockets if they only wanted to know about cogs.
• Don’t include a single large image in your email if you can avoid it since this is how most spam nowadays seems to operate

	Email Newsletters Create visually stunning and engaging email newsletters. Choose from over 135 HTML templates. You can import your company logo and create your own fully personalised branded email newsletter. Keep your clients locked in and coming back again and again.
	Website Sign Up Forms Out of 100 visitors to your websites how many are you now able to market too? Turn anonymous website visitors into leads and prospects so you get more clients. Create signup forms with our point-and-click wizard – no need for a web designer!
	Follow Up Autoresponders Build lasting relationships with prospects using an automated sequence of personalized emails. Send a series of personalized email messages to new leads at intervals you define. It’s like having your own dedicated sales team working for you around the clock.
	Email Web Analytics You will know exactly how many emails were delivered from every campaign. Not only that but you will know exactly who opened what email and clicked on what link in each email. And it’s all in easy to read pie and bar graph so you have accurate, easy-to-read reports that show you what works and what doesn’t.
	Survey Your Clients – NEW Using the drag & drop editor you can create customized surveys and feedback forms which you can link to from your email campaigns or auto-responders and then blast to your list in minutes. Get the edge over all your competition by knowing exactly what your clients need and want.

More Features Than Any Other Email Marketing Software.

Now With “Built In Mini CRM” System – (Client Relationship Management)

SmartEmail’s email marketing software is fully featured and was built specifically to help automate your follow up marketing. It will turn more leads into buyers – we guarantee it, or your money back.

• No per email fees
• 2 simple plans to choose from
• Over 135 built-in email templates
• Step-by-step campaign wizard
• Custom fields for complete personalisation
• Unlimited auto-responders
• Split test email campaigns
• Powerful, automated triggers
• Full campaign statistics
• Google Analytics integration
• Automated bounced email processing
• Full WYSIWYG campaign editing
• Easily import/export contacts
• Pause and resume sending
• Automatic event logging
• Built-in CRM functionality
• Google Calendar integration
• RSS email campaign archive
• Built in survey feature so you can find out more about your clients
• Completely browser based so you can access it anywhere in the world

See the Entire Feature List Here For SmartEmail Marketer.