How to Stay CAN-SPAM Compliant

Email is a great way to promote your new business, however if you don’t do it right, you run the risk of running afoul of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Each violation of any of its provisions carries a potential fine of $11,000.00 CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. It affects any emails that promote or advertise a commercial product or service. Emails that deal with an existing business relationship or ease the fulfillment of an existing transaction are prohibited from containing false routing information but are otherwise not covered by the provisions of the act. The law is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S Government’s consumer protection agency. Here are the steps the law requires:

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Include no false or misleading header information.
   The "From," "To," and routing information need to incorporate the originating domain name and email address of the email’s sender.
2. You can’t use deceptive subject lines.
   The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the nature of the email. You must identify commercial email as such and include a valid physical postal address.
3. You must include an opt-out method for recipients.
   You have to provide a return email address or another Internet-based means for recipients to choose to not receive future emails and you must honor their requests.
4. You must be able to process these opt out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email.
   Within 10 days of receiving a request you have to honor it. Nor can you sell or transfer the addresses of those who choose to opt out or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. As of now, there is no Do Not Email list.