Email4Thought

Useful Information about the Australian Spam Act

A nice succinct post on the Australian Legislation with some useful links can be found on Deliverability.com

Excerpt:

Enforcement Effects:

According to the ACMA, as a result of Spam Act 2003, 200 businesses have since been required to amend their email practices, five businesses have been fined over civil penalties totaling $20,000, and three businesses have provided enforceable undertakings. The ACMA has recently begun a federal case under the act against three companies for allegedly sending mobile users unsolicited SMS messages concerning Australian dating sites, seeking fines of up to $1.1 million per day. A hearing has been set for February 6.

Privacy Policy and the Industry - Email Insider Summit

Yesterday I attended the Privacy session at the Email Insider Summit in Florida. One of the key points that I took away from this presentation was an offshoot of a point raised by Return Path's Tom Bartel. Now we all know that in order to comply with legislation we need to publish our Privacy Policy and state within this policy what we will be doing with the data we collect and Best Practise advocates that that we link to the policy at the point of subscription. All well and good. But who actually reads the Privacy Policy? The answer...very few. So, on one hand this is good right? Because it allows us to put the typical 3rd party rental disclaimer in easily and no one's the wiser right? Well...I guess so...but what kind of list are you growing? Is it a good quality list full of addresses which want to receive offers from 3rd parties?..or is it a list which is full of addresses who are not aware that they will be receiving 3rd party offers and are very likely to hit the 'this is spam' button as soon as they recieve an offer? If it is the latter, what value is this? If your aim is to grow a good quality list then you need to be transparent and let your subscriber know what they're signing up for at the point of subcription..easily and obviously. So, if your aim is to share the data with 3rd parties, then ask them to opt-in to receive them, which means offering an empty checkbox with a clear and obvious option for them to select rather than a pre-ticked checkbox with some confusing text. This then will give you a better quality, more valuable database. And if you're not going to share the data with 3rd parties -then proclaim it! Again- be transparent!! Have a disclaimer alongside of the form which states clearly that you will not be sharing the data with 3rd parties...This in turn will reassure the subscriber and very likely increase your subscriptions. Originally Posted at: dmaemailblog.com

Labels: Subscriber Forms

Has Legislation Helped?

I was asked an interesting question this week in an interview for an Australian Publication, Marketing Magazine. They asked: "In your opinion, has the tightening of laws and regulations around email marketing been beneficial or detrimental to the industry? Why?" Hmmm...where to begin? I believe it has been totally beneficial - but not for the reasons you may suspect. The actual problem of spam isn't caused by legitimate marketers and as such the real spam issue can't be resolved by tightening legislation. A recent consumer survey was conducted by Q Interactive, which revealed that consumers' definition of spam varies greatly with that of legislation...it seems to have evolved from being 'unsolicited' to 'unwanted' emails. That said however, I believe legislation serves another purpose - which is to force marketers to continually look at their email marketing practices and find ways to improve so that their efforts are not only not unsolicited but are actually wanted. Consumers are becoming less tolerant of irrelevant offers - not just in email marketing but in all areas of direct marketing. As a marketing medium, email is brilliant and allows you to segment and target so that you are able to send relevant emails. Without legislation, marketers could very well still be sending untargeted, irrelevant offers and therefore not be achieving the excellent ROI that email campaigns achieve today. The e-consultancy/Adestra's Email Marketing Census 2008 reveals that email is rated as the second best channel for ROI after SEO. Therefore I believe the introduction of legislation has refined email marketing and helped to make it the successful marketing channel it is today. Originally Posted: dmaemailblog.com

Labels: legislation