The Email Delivery Guru

Someone asked me the other day, "Can you help me understand where in CAN-SPAM it says that it is illegal to buy lists?"

CAN-SPAM doesn't prohibit list buying or email append. ISPs and spam filterers hate it, because their users hate it. If you're buying a list or engaging in email append, your spam complaints spike, because permission is poor. Smart receivers notice this spike in spam complaints, and use that information to identify which senders they don't want to accept mail from. Don't believe me? Ask Cloudmark. Don't believe them? Ask consumers themselves.

ISPs may not always be loud and explicit enough about publicly declaring that such practices are verboten. But, take a look at how the world of email deliverability works. Spamhaus, a very popular third-party blacklist used by many of the top ISPs, has blacklisted a whole bunch of companies (example) for engaging in these practices. Get blacklisted by Spamhaus, and you're no longer able to mail to Comcast, Yahoo, Hotmail, Road Runner, Gmail and a whole bunch of other ISPs. The net effect here is that these ISPs, spam filterers, and blacklist operators prohibit these practices.

That brings to mind a few more common questions I receive about CAN-SPAM regularly.

"My email is CAN-SPAM compliant, so ISPs have to deliver it to the inbox." WRONG. CAN-SPAM has NO REQUIREMENT for ISPs to accept your mail or deliver it to the inbox. In fact, prevailing law pretty well allows ISPs to block whatever they want, even if the mail is 100% legal.

"CAN-SPAM defines spam, so if my mail is CAN-SPAM compliant, it can't be spam." WRONG. CAN-SPAM does not define spam. It defines what things have to be in a commercial message, and that includes labeling the mail as an advertisement if it is spam. (That last bit means that you can have totally CAN-SPAM compliance.)

CAN-SPAM does include the "affirmative consent standard," which I find to be a pretty good definition of opt-in. "The term 'affirmative consent', when used with respect to a commercial electronic mail message, means that- (A) the recipient expressly consented to receive the message, either in response to a clear and conspicuous request for such consent or at the recipient's own initiative; and (B) if the message is from a party other than the party to which the recipient communicated such consent, the recipient was given clear and conspicuous notice at the time the consent was communicated that the recipient's electronic mail address could be transferred to such other party for the purpose of initiating commercial electronic mail messages."

If recipients didn't opt-in to mail from you directly -- or, when  they signed up with somebody else, they weren't clearly and obviously informed that you would be mailing them - you're not meeting the CAN-SPAM affirmative consent standard.

Want to know more about email marketing deliverability? Downlaod the Permission and Deliverability Guide to learn how you can improve your email deliverability.