Email marketing is often advised by home-based business consultants as a way to increase you prospect list fast and with a fairly low CPI (cost per impression).  These experts will usually tell you that when done correctly, you will earn thousands and thousands of dollars.   Invariably, these “experts” have an email service and list available and for just this much money they will do it all for you. 

In my experience, these experts are using old lists, and are not following the Can-Spam Act of 2003.  This means that in most cases you will not see a good ROI (return on investment).  The worst case scenario is that the you are contacted by the DOJ and they are talking about accessing you penalties of  up to $11,000 per incident.  Since you contracted the service, it is your responsibility to make sure that the service is following the CAN-SPAM ACT.

So what exactly do we need to do as marketers to ensure we are not going to get a visit by UNCLE SAM.  Well the good news is that the act doesn’t preclude marketing emails, so for those of honest doing legal email marketing this was great news!  Before the CAN-SPAM Act, states and ISP were trying to kill or block all emails that they determined were promoting anything.  I had emails blocked that I was sending to my customers.  Now, that the federal government has defined spam or more importantly what is not spam, we have recourse if an ISP blocks a legitimate marketing email. 

 
I want to make it clear that I am not a lawyer and if you have any questions or doubts about what you or your service is doing, contact a lawyer.

 
The first question you need to ask is “Is this email spam?” Well luckily the CAN-SPAM act defines for us what commercial ads are and are not considered spam.  

 .A "transactional or relationship message" – email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

 If you are sending an email to an existing customer or is confirming or announcing the completion of an action taken by the customer or prospect, then, other that item number 1 below, these emails would be exempt from the act.   I believe examples of these types of emails are order confirmation, emails sent from web based forms when the prospect clicks on a submit button and active members of web sites forum subscribers or blog subscribers, would all be exempt.  I strongly suggest, even though as I read the act, its not required, to always include a simple opt out section (item 4 below) in your email.

 
As best as I can determine, this is what the law requires (reference http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.pdf):

       1. It bans false or misleading header information. Your email's "From," "To," and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.   This means that the practice of bouncing emails off out of country servers that hide the point of origin of the email, you are in violation of this act.  If you have created a legal email there really isn’t any reason to go through the added expense of using a hidden server.

       2. It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.    This is usually where most of the emails I receive from home based business companies or promoter first fail to be in compliance with the act.  This means subject lines like:”you just won a trip” or “Mark where have you been? or “Mark your order confirmation”  or pretty blatantly misleading.   We can enter a grey area with subject lines like “Mike here is something for you” or “Mike something you might be interested in ?” may or may not be frowned upon.  In my opinion, if we are using a legitimate list, then a subject line like, Mike, I was told you wanted this.” or “Mike , is this what you were looking for.”  should be in line with the act, but again I am not a lawyer, so what is and what is not a misleading subject line may be different to a someone representing the Consumer protection Agency. 

       3. It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it's illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.

       4. It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.   In my opinion this is the number one violation of the act.  Lets first look at the valid physical postal address, it is my belief that a USPS mail box is sufficient to fulfill this requirement (remember I am not a lawyer), If you are working from  home, using your actual home address, in my opinion , would not be a safe practice, I strongly suggest a USPS mail box.

If you are going to purchase desktop emailing software then you need to know how the law applies to Emailers.   I will not cover these regulations other than to say as a person who contracts these types of services I always send an email asking “Does your company comply with the CAN-SPAM act which became law on January 1, 2004, United States of America?”   The only way I will do business is if the question is answered affirmatively and the email is signed with the name of a real person, with a phone number so I can validate that the person does exist.  I SAVE THESE EMAILS as proof that I have done what can be considered as “reasonable” to ensure that I and the service I am using is in compliance with the act. 

The above information is not complete, there are additional types of emails with additional regulation that I didn’t write about.

The bottom line is that emails do work, when written well, but there are pitfalls both from a financial and legal aspect and you need to beware.   In my opinion the best way to build your list is by creating your own using your own capture pages, search engine placement, and pay for click advertising.   If you are going to use email, then create your email that complies with the act that promotes information or product for free.  I also believe that your email should text with maybe one non critical graphic because the graphic will probably be blocked by the prospect email reader.