DMA Asks FTC to Recognize Transactional Vs. Commercial E-mail Differences
The Federal Trade Commission should clarify the CAN-SPAM act to recognize the difference between purely sales-oriented e-mail and billing, transaction confirmation or other relationship messages, according to lobbying efforts from the Direct Marketing Association.
The concerns arise from nebulous language, which might result in consumers opting out from receiving billing notices, for example.
Furthermore, when multiple advertisers are represented within a single e-mail message, each advertiser should not be treated as a “sender” and thereby required to provide its do-not-e-mail lists, according to the DMA.
The DMA also requested that the FTC loosen its “primary purpose” guidelines. Currently, CAN-SPAM requires the FTC to determine what constitutes a message’s primary purpose, commercial or not being the most significant. Such a blanket ruling would determine which restrictions a given message should be subject to, regardless of whether a message serves multiple purposes, such as newsletters that contain both editorial content and sales solicitations.
Among the types of e-mail the DMA feels should be universally excluded from the commercial primary purpose guidelines are e-mails sent at the request of the recipient, messages that contain billing statements, transaction confirmations, subscription notifications or account statements, and those that provide editorial content, including newsletters.
Even some types of commercial messages that might be excluded from CAN-SPAM’s reach, according to the DMA’s petition. For instance, those a consumer has elected to receive in return for a premium, such as free e-mail service, should not be blocked, according to the DMA.
The DMA registered its displeasure that mixed-purpose messages, such as those containing both advertising and editorial matter, should not necessarily be tagged as commercial messages with the e-mail’s subject line.
The DMA made its requests in both a letter it and 21 other trade and business organizations signed, as well as testimony from Jerry Cerasale, the DMA’s senior vice president of government affairs.
