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The Advanced Mailing
Service Spam-policy
At Campaign Monitor,
we take permission very seriously. By creating an account and agreeing to our Terms of Use, you are also
agreeing to this anti-spam policy.
The law isn’t enough,
it’s permission that counts
While the CAN-SPAM
laws are a step in the right direction for reducing the spam problem, we don’t
feel they go far enough. Our definition of spam goes beyond the laws in most
countries and encompasses what we believe to be true permission email
marketing.
Spam is any email you send to someone who hasn’t given you their direct
permission to contact them on the topic of the email.
But that’s not enough.
Permission is a fuzzy word open to interpretation. Let’s get into some specific
scenarios so it’s clear what does and doesn’t constitute permission.
What kind of email
addresses are OK to send to with Campaign Monitor?
To send email to
anyone using Campaign Monitor, you must have clearly obtained their permission.
This could be done through:
- An email newsletter subscribe form on your web site.
- An opt-in checkbox on a form.
This checkbox must not be checked by default, the person completing the
form must willingly select the checkbox to indicate they
want to hear from you.
- If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can
only contact them if it was explained to them that you would be contacting them by
email AND they ticked a box indicating they would like you to contact them.
- Customers who have purchased
from you within the last 2 years.
- If someone gives you their business card and you have explicitly asked for permission to
add them to your list, you can contact them. If they dropped their
business card in a fishbowl at a trade show, there must be a sign
indicating they will be contacted by email about that specific topic.
Basically, you can
only ever email anyone who has clearly given you permission to email them
specifically about the subject you’re contacting them about.
What kind of email
address ARE NOT OK to send to with Campaign Monitor?
Anything outside the
examples above doesn’t equal permission in our eyes, but here are some examples
to make sure we’re crystal clear. By using Campaign Monitor, you agree not to
import or send to any email address which:
- You do not have explicit, provable permission to contact in relation to the
topic of the email you’re sending.
- You bought, loaned, rented or
in any way acquired from a third party, no matter what they claim
about quality or permission. You need to obtain permission yourself.
- You haven’t contacted via email in the last 2 years. Permission doesn’t age well
and these people have either changed email address or won’t remember
giving their permission in the first place.
- You scraped or copy and pasted from the web. Just because people publish their
email address doesn’t mean they want to hear from you.
Sure, some of these
people might have given you their email address, but what’s missing is your
permission to email them commercial messages. Blasting promotional emails to
any of these people won’t be effective and will more than likely see your email
marked as spam by many of your recipients.
What content MUST I
include in my email?
Every email you send
using Campaign Monitor must include the following:
A single-click unsubscribe link that instantly removes the subscriber
from your list. Once they unsubscribe, you can never email them again.
The name and physical address of the sender. If you’re sending an email for your
client, you’ll need to include your client’s details instead.
How we’ll know if you
don’t have permission
Campaign Monitor has
numerous layers of approval and monitoring to ensure you comply with our
anti-spam policy. Here’s a few of them:
Until your account has
been approved by a member of our team, every email you send will need to be
approved.
Our software is
directly integrated into the spam reporting systems for some of the
biggest ISP’s like Hotmail and AOL. If you don’t have permission and someone
marks your campaign as spam, we’ll know about it the moment that button is
pressed. If you receive a complaint rate greater than 0.25% of all recipients
(that’s 25 complaints for every 10,000 recipients) your account will be
terminated. This is a generous figure that takes into account false spam
reports.
Our team verifies all large lists imported into our software. Until we’ve given it the
all clear, you can’t send to it.
We monitor blacklists and our abuse accounts all day every day. We can pinpoint who
is causing us delivery problems or attracting complaints very easily.
If we do discover that
you’re emailing people without their permission, we will terminate your account
with Campaign Monitor immediately.
In the end, it’s
really common sense. Take off your marketing hat and put yourself in your
recipient’s shoes. If they don’t recognize who you are or aren’t interested in
what you’re sending, they’ll think you’re a spammer. It’s that simple.
If you have any
questions about our Anti-Spam Policy, or if you want to report spamming
activity by one of our customers, please contact our abuse department at:
Postal Address
Campaign Monitor
404/3-5 Stapleton Ave
Sutherland NSW 2232
Sydney, Australia
Telephone
+61 2 9521 5312
Fax
+61 2 9521 5316
Email
[email protected]
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