What you need to know about permission

Permission is the only thing separating you and your clients from the spammers of this world, and is by far the most important aspect of email marketing. For many permission based emails remain a grey area. It doesn’t need to be. First of all, let’s clarify what spam is, and then what kind of permission you and your clients will need to use GuardianHost Email Services.

For designers, partners and affiliates, this is so important, because not only will your client land themselves in legal trouble if they don’t comply, you as their designer or service provider can also end up at the wrong end of the law.

Being ‘legal’ is not enough - our definition of spam

While the CAN-SPAM laws are a step in the right direction for classifying and reducing spam, 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.

The type of permission you MUST have

You can only email subscribers using our services if you obtained their permission in any of the following ways.

• They opted in via your web site - This could either be through a newsletter subscribe form or by ticking a checkbox on another form. This checkbox cannot be checked by default and it must clearly explain that checking it will mean you will be contacting them by email.
• They completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed - 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 they would be contacted by email AND they ticked a box indicating they would like to be contacted.
• They gave you their business card - 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 the specific topic.
• They purchased something from you in the last 2 years - By making a purchase from you they have provided their permission implicitly. Feel free to email them but at the same time, we think it’s always better to ask anyway, so why not include an opt-in checkbox as part of the checkout process.

Scenarios that DON’T equate to permission

Basically, anything outside the examples above doesn’t equal permission, but here are some examples to make sure we’re crystal clear.

• You obtained the email addresses from a third party - Whether you purchased a list, were provided one by a partner or bought a bankrupt competitor’s customer list, those people never gave YOU permission to email them and they will consider your email spam. No matter the claims of the source of this list, you cannot email them with our email marketing services.
• You scraped or “copy and pasted” the addresses from the Internet - Just because people publish their email address doesn’t mean they want to hear from you.
• You haven’t emailed that address for more than 2 years - Permission doesn’t age well. Even if you got their permission legitimately, they won’t remember giving it to you. If you haven’t sent something to that address in the last 2 years, you can’t start now.

If you think about it logically, one must realize that it is simply not a good idea to email people who do not want to receive those emails. Why would you waste your time and violate the law in the process.

I hope this helps you make an informed decision regarding your email subscriber's list and the needed permissions from your subscribers!

- Marcus Tilghman

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