As of July 7, 2008 new Federal Trade Commission rules go into affect to clarify some of the original provisions in the 2003 CAN-SPAM act.  The highlights of the changes are described below in plain English to help you understand what changes you may need to make to your mailing practices.  For a full copy of the FTC release click here or if you’d like a summary issued by the Email Sender & Provider Coalition you can click here.

Technically, these rules only affect mailers who are sending to US residents, however it is good practice for Canadian focused mailers to be compliant for two reasons:

• Should you ever decide to start sending email to the US you’ll be compliant and have nothing to worry about. Moreover, it’s probably more work to filter out addresses that are US based than to put a bit of upfront work into ensuring compliance.
• Second, CAN-SPAM law helps define activities that become industry ‘best practice’. If you’re not compliant, you may find that your deliverability with ISP’s, especially Yahoo, Hotmail/Live, and AOL will be adversely affected.

The Unsubscribe Process
There are now defined rules around the unsubscribe process that clarify the process for subscribers removing themselves from a mailing list.

• Users cannot be required to pay any fee to unsubscribe from a mailing list.
• Email recipients cannot be required to provide anything more than an email address to unsubscribe.  In other words you cannot require a password, name, account number, etc. There are currently a lot of mailers out there who require a user to log into their account before they can unsubscribe – this is no longer allowed.
• The unsubscribe process must be one of only two accepted processes. A reply to an email address or a visit to a single web page.  You cannot have a multi-step unsubscribe process.

Definition of Sender
It is now easier to understand which of multiple parities advertising in an email is defined as the Sender and needs to comply with the CAN-SPAM laws. Essentially, if there are multiple advertisers in a message or you mail on behalf of other advertisers you can designate one Sender who is responsible for compliance. Typically, this the name found in the ‘From’ line of the email message.  

Definition of a Person
Previously it was unclear whether or not non-profits were subject to CAN-SPAM.  Now the FTC expands the definition of a Person to include groups, institutions, unincorporated associations, businesses of all sizes, non profits, as well as human beings. If you’re mailing as a non-profit organization, there’s no doubt that you must comply.  

Forward to a Friend
Businesses providing an incentive to users who forward an email message to a friend, (discounts, sweepstakes entries, etc) are now considered the sender of that email and must comply with CAN-SPAM. This means that the business now has to provide a way for this new recipient to be opted out from future mailings or ‘forwards’ from friends.  

For clarity, this does not apply to email messages that simply have a link stating ‘Forward to a friend’ without any incentive offered.  

Company Contact information
Senders may now publish a PO Box or private mailbox as the sender of a commercial email message. In the past, this was not clear. This is good news for those small businesses working out of a home office who don’t want business mail delivered to their home.