Web Design News

As web designers we’re often asked by clients about how they can go about marketing to their customers via email lists. Here in Australia the law is very clear about constitutes spam and the penalties for spamming are harsh so we web designers need to know what we should tell our clients.

If you’re wondering about the law regarding email spam then here’s something I wrote for our small business blog. Please don’t just take my word for it … do some research yourself because you could already be doing exactly what your country’s spam laws class as illegal.

More and more small businesses are using email as a way of marketing their products and services to past customers and some future customers too. But there’s always a potential risk of being labelled as a spammer when you use email.

Many countries these days have strict anti-spam laws in place that clearly identify what constitutes spam and what penalties those who break the anti-spam laws will face. Because the anti-spam laws in each country are different I would encourage you to read those laws for yourself.

Here in Australia there are three key requirements set down by our anti-spam laws. Those three requirements are:

1. Consent - you must have the consent of the recipient and you must be able to prove that you have received that consent.

2. Your emails to past clients and potential clients must clearly identify you and your business as the authorised sender.

3. Your emails must contain a functioning unsubscribe link
(you can read more about the Australian anti-spam laws here)

Now if your laws are similar then there is an important factor for every small business in that first point. You must have the consent … and prove you have the consent of the recipient … before you can start sending them emails. That means that you just can’t go round harvesting email addresses wherever you might find them and adding them to your email list. There’s simply no consent in doing that.

I know that’s what a lot of small businesses do to build their email lists but if you want to stay on the right side of the law then the only way you can build your email list is with the consent of of the people you want to send those emails out to.

If you’re trying to build up an email list of potential customers then the only way to do it to stay within the law is via an opt-in option … nothing less will do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 5:28 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.