In truth never… Unless you meet this one criteria: You are forwarding an email to someone else from your own email account. You should never use this in a commercial or bulk broadcast. Yes that even includes your forward to a friend campaigns. If it’s not a forward, don’t label it one. Today’s topic comes from a post I read over on the Email Marketing Lounge titled: “Who Said the Political Season was...

Lately I’ve been putting links in my delicious feed (available via RSS or email only – Subscribe on the right sidebar) to a number of sites that have written and commented on the recient court rulings where the Virginia Supreme Court declared the state’s anti-spam law unconstitutional. By doing so they automatically reversed the conviction of a man once considered one of the world’s most prolific spammers. Va. Court...

Found this website kinda of randomly, while researching some PIPEDA information… It talks about several Key factors for marketers when looking to market to Canadians – a report published by Marketing Sherpa. Some of the tips are very funny; our strong relationship with hockey is mentioned a few times, and the “Looooong” winters – LOL – that we have here and the “Short” summers… Some...

Just a quick Public Service Announcement, the new rules announced by the FTC for CAN-SPAM changes take effect today. To recap the changes here are a number of good resources to review can be found here: EmailKarma.net: CAN-SPAM Rule Clarification The Internet Patrol: New CAN-SPAM Rules Effective This Month Require Single Action Opt-Out, Designated Senders, and More Shop.org: CAN-Spam Rules – What They Mean to Retailers Internet Law...

Recently the FTC clarified a number of rules within CAN-SPAM (pdf). Here is my understanding of these changes (please note this is not legal advice). There are two major changes to note within these clarifications: Changes to the definition of a “sender.” The new rule enforces the idea of a single designated sender, for messages with multiple advertisers. The designated sender is defined as the entity in the...

The Senate of Canada is currently reviewing the Bill S-235, referred to as the Anti-Spam Act, presented to the senate by Senator Goldstein. This is somewhat similar to CAN-SPAM except for the fact that this is an OPT-IN email marketing law (PIPEDA also deals with opt-in for PII), and the US law is focused on opt-out. The most important information about bill S-235 deals with how it would make the sending of Unsolicited commercial email...