What Is the Definition of Spamming?

Spam email is a huge problem today. Everybody who has an email account is inundated with offensive messages they didn't ask for and don't want. As an end user it is pretty easy to see what spam is, but if you are an email marketer, you need a working definition of what spam is so you can avoid it.

Considerations

The CAN-SPAM law is the current law of the land regarding email harvesting and sending spam emails. This law:
1. Bans the use of false or misleading header information
2. Prohibits misleading subject lines
3. Requires a single click opt-out method in your email
4. Requires you to identify your message as an advertisement
Obviously, most marketing email fails the last one; even big businesses that send email often fail to label the email as an advertisement.

Misconceptions

Just because you follow the CAN-SPAM guidelines doesn't mean you are not spamming. Many people criticize the law for not going far enough to more clearly define spam and allow provisions to stop it. The ultimate judge of whether you are sending spam is the recipient of your email.

Prevention/Solution

If you send commercial emails, newsletters, or other regularly scheduled emails to subscribers, you should use email best practices in addition to incorporating the tenets of the CAN-SPAM act. Legitimate email marketers go above and beyond to ensure that the people to whom they send emails want to receive the emails and even look forward to it. Some best practices include:
- Confirming subscriptions
- Immediately honoring unsubscribe requests
- Never selling email addresses
- Segmenting email campaigns based on data collected
- Purging lists of bad or failed email addresses
Best practices help you maintain a good email reputation.

Benefits

By going above and beyond the simple tenets of the CAN-SPAM act, you enhance your email reputation, which improves your chances of getting email delivered. If your email messages never get to the recipient, then all that time and effort spent on crafting your campaign is wasted. Carefully cultivating a responsive email list will bring you much greater return on investment. The old 80/20 rule, which states that 80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers, applies to email subscribers too.

Considerations

As with all customer communications, you must maintain the perspective of the customers to understand what they want from you. Even if someone subscribes at one time, he may tire of your email and remove himself. If you continue to send email, it not only puts your company in a bad light--it could also affect your mail server when customers reach for the "flag as spam" button. Once requested email that is no longer wanted is a leading factor in spam complaints.

Resources

• CAN-SPAM Act