Complying with the Can Spam act
Have you read the actual text of the law or have you relied on some other person’s summary of the requirements? It is well worth the time to read through all 21 pages of the act and be sure you have a firm understanding of not only the explicit requirements but also the nuances. I’m not a lawyer. I’m simply a technology executive working hard to ensure that my company and our clients have the tools they need to comply with the law. Having read and re-read it a few times, there is still quite a bit of ambiguity especially for participants in network marketing. One example of this ambiguity is the definition of sender “… means a person who initiates such a message and whose product, service, or Internet web site is advertised or promoted by the message.” As an affiliate or a network what does that mean to you when you are promoting somebody else’s products? If you send out a message for an advertiser that you pulled from a network that does not include any of your links, does that mean that the message in essence has no sender? Regardless of the confusing language, one thing is very clear; all of us need to take the necessary steps to comply
Helping our clients comply with the law.
Our affiliate tracking solution DirectTrack ™ now has some simple and yet very powerful capabilities to assist our clients with Can Spam compliance. Each advertising campaign managed within the system can optionally contain additional terms that affiliates must agree to before they are provided with the code needed to promote the campaign. Further, if these terms are modified during the life of the campaign, affiliates need to agree to the amended terms before they are provided access to the linking codes. Along with these additional terms, a suppression list can be uploaded and displayed for download within the affiliate interface. This provides the affiliate with very easy access to the list of addresses to which they may not send the offer.
The process we recommend to our clients to follow is to include additional terms that clearly state that it is the affiliates responsibility to comply with all aspects of the Can Spam law and to scrub their mailing list against the suppression list before sending. If the suppression list has been changed and a new one loaded into the system, the terms should be modified to inform the affiliate that the new list must be downloaded before further transmissions. This provides our clients with a simple and effective means to comply with the law.
Further, we are developing a new tool that will ease the burden of collecting, tracking and providing the suppression list to affiliates. DNEList.com (DNE = do not email), is a platform that can be used by advertisers to maintain, control and distribute their suppression list.
Advertisers can upload their list to the system in one of two ways. Either they can upload and have the system store the email addresses unencrypted and those addresses are provided in the same manner to their affiliates or they can opt to upload their list and have our system encrypt each of the email addresses. The system will then never actually store the unencrypted emails – only the encrypted versions. For an affiliate to make use of the encrypted suppression list they are required to upload their mailing list to the system, which will then encrypt each of their addresses in the same method, match the encrypted suppression list against the encrypted mailing list, remove any matches and then provide an decrypted and now scrubbed version of the mailing list to the affiliate.
The system will also assist advertisers and affiliates with complying with the law’s requirement that email addresses are removed within 10 business days of receiving the request. Affiliates who do not download an advertiser’s suppression list at least weekly are sent friendly reminders to encourage them to keep the suppression list up to date. Affiliates who do not download the list within the required 10 business day time period are notified of the requirement of the law and asked to update the list immediately. The advertiser is also informed of the affiliate’s lack of compliance so that they can take action to have the affiliate cease emailing their offer.
For list maintenance, each affiliate is provided with an unsubscribe link. This unsubscribe link is tied to both the advertiser and the affiliate. This provides the system with the ability to show the advertiser reports showing which affiliates are causing the largest number of unsubscribes. The system also tracks multiple unsubscribes from the same recipient email address and shows whether those unsubscribes have been generated by the same or different affiliates and the elapsed time between the requests. This helps to identify problems and allows the advertiser to take proactive action, hopefully, before the recipient turns to the legal system.
An additional aspect of compliance monitoring is the seeding of the suppression lists with email addresses that are closely monitored for activity. These seeded emails should never receive any messages and if they do one of the affiliates could very well be mailing to the suppression list. Any emails received to these addresses are monitored and stored within a database. If the email contains the appropriate unsubscribe link, the system can even determine which affiliate sent the message.
A further aspect of compliance is monitoring the activity of affiliates. Each affiliate is requested to add a specific email address to their list. This list is automatically processed and stored in the database allowing advertisers to spot check any of their affiliates for compliance with the terms they have established.
Our mission at Direct Response Technologies is to provide powerful tools to our clients to help them execute successful online marketing initiatives. Complying with the ever changing legal landscape is core to that mission and the changes we’ve made and continue to make to DirectTrack ™ provide our clients with tools to help them do just that. DNEList.com will take that compliance assistance even farther by helping online advertisers go the extra mile in complying with the new Can Spam act.
About the Author: Jason Wolfe is the President/CEO of Direct Response Technologies, Inc.
