Maxenews Email Marketing Articles & Case Studies - The New EU Anti-Spam Legislation

The EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive will become law on October 31st and will be backed up with UK legislation on December 11th that will make Spam a criminal offence. You will only be able to send email and SMS communications to customers if you have prior consent.

To most marketers it won’t mean any major differences as permission based opt-in marketing methods have become standard for many years in the UK. However to ensure that you don’t get tripped up by this new legislation we have produced a short guide for you.

Legislation main points

You must get prior consent from the prospect before sending emails and SMS messages to consumers
Corporate customers and prospects will continue to work on the opt-out principal
You can still target people who have purchased from you in the past but you must give them the opportunity to opt-out on every occasion. You must also only target them with similar products and services to their previous purchase. Competition entrants will not count as customers if they have not purchased anything.
Consent means the customer must take a proactive action. For example if a box is pre-ticked then this is NOT a legal way of getting their consent to opt-in to communications.

Sourcing lists

The list rental market is likely to change. There are many lists in the market that sell themselves as opt-in but on closer inspection are clearly opt-out.

If you rent a list that is an opt-out list then generally you are likely to be the one to find themselves in hot water, not the list broker.

A general set of questions you should ask your broker is:

Is the list opt-in? If the answer is not a clear ‘Yes’ then it is likely the list is not opt-in
Have the list members opted-in to receive 3rd party emails?
What form of opt-in was used? Tick box, telephone conversation or at a seminar? Always beware the ‘telephone researched’ answer – could this simply be a telesales operator getting all the persons details from the company receptionist?

Not only would you be breaking the law with these opt-out lists you will also get a poor response. Opt-in lists are full of recipients who want to receive your emails – all current research supports this argument.

Building your house list

When building your list ensure you carry out the following procedures:

Include an opt-in tick box on your registration pages – DO NOT pre-populate it as this is an opt-out registration!
At the time of opt-in specify what they will receive and how often
Include an origination statement in your emails so they know where they signed up
For best practice carry out double opt-in registration. This is where upon completing a registration page an email is sent to the customer. They have to click on the link or reply to the email to opt-in to the emails
If you collect your opt-in via telesales staff or a face to face meeting such as an exhibition try and gain a double opt-in via email so you have written evidence of the opt-in
If you are planning to sell your data on to third parties then get two opt-ins, one for your use and one to allow you to sell their personal data on.

The CAP Code

Although this legislation gives you the opportunity to continue to market corporate customers on an opt-out basis, this still goes against the CAP Code which states that all recipients must have opted-in to digital communications. It is expected that the CAP Code will be changed but it is still something to bear in mind.

The following link provides a comprehensive account of the new laws with further information on areas such as enforcement and gaps that have been identified in the legislation.

http://www.marketinglaw.co.uk/Searchresult.asp?Article=894

Summary

Our advice is simple – permission based marketing is proven to be more effective than opt-out marketing.

Spend your time building a list of people who want to be on that list – whether that is through telemarketing, direct mail, your website or renting an email list.

Give your customers real value in your newsletters and emails – and give them what they want.