The Association for Interactive Media is releasing a set of resolutions for responsible e-mail marketing this morning, Ben Isaacson, executive director, told DIRECT Newsline.
It is important to put out the resolutions now in the heat of publicity surrounding DoubleClick’s alleged privacy violations, Isaacson said. “The industry has to be proactive,” he said. “The industry can’t be in a reactive mode in the face of FTC charges.” The Federal Trade Commission recently opened an investigation into DoubleClick’s privacy policies.
AIM, a subsidiary of the Direct Marketing Association, developed the resolutions at a meeting of its Council for Responsible E-Mail at the Net.Marketing conference yesterday. While specific wording was still being hammered out at press time, the principles agreed upon are that:
* Marketers must not falsify the sender’s domain name;
* Marketers must not falsify the subject line to mislead the reader from the content of the e-mail message;
* Messages must indicate how the recipient can unsubscribe from future messages and include the sender’s contact information;
* Marketers must inform the respondent when his or her e-mail addresss is collected and indicate for what purpose the e-mail address will be used;
* Marketers must not harvest e-mail addresses with the intent to send bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail without consumers’ knowledge or consent; and
* The Council opposes sending bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail to an e-mail address without a prior business relationship having been established.
“The idea behind the guidelines is to get out in the open what everyone implicitly agrees on already — that thou shalt not lie, cheat or steal,” Isaacson said.
The resolutions are merely guidelines to help companies doing business on the Web to regulate themselves. They will not be enforced by AIM or the DMA. AIM will propose the resolutions to the DMA this spring.
AIM’s 500 members include online and offline merchants, advertisers, ad agencies, interactive firms and hardware and software vendors.
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