Time for a Refresher: Are You Managing Your Email Marketing the Right (and Legal!) Way?
Ah, summer! 😎 The season of refreshing hops in the pool, refreshing beverages… and a refresher on email marketing rules and best practices.
We’re serious, y’all! If you’re doing any kind of email marketing, or are planning to, it’s worth your time to brush up on how to do it properly and by the book. And if you don’t agree… this ain’t the blog post for you.
We’ll start with the nitty-gritty rules and regulations you should be following, and next week we’ll get into some design and content tips to improve your email performance and ensure you don’t get caught by those nasty little spam filters.
If Nothing Else, Please Get Permission:
We say this to clients at least once a week, and we’ll keep saying it forever: Do not send people mass emails without permission!
It’s one thing to send a cold email to someone that you don’t know, when there’s a good reason to do it. You probably do that multiple times a day, and that’s totes OK.
It’s another thing to gather a list of 1,000 email addresses of people you don’t know, and send them a mass email that may or may not be relevant to those people in any way.
If you are building an email list, it’s probably because you want to send important info about your org or your business to potential supporters and customers, right? How do you know that the people receiving that email from you actually want it?
It’s an important question, because if you’re emailing people who don’t care about you, don’t see why your work or your products are valuable, and don’t want to hear from you at all, you’re giving those people a reason to dislike your brand. It’s the complete opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.
Spam is defined as any unsolicited, irrelevant email sent to a bulk list of users without their permission. Note the last three words there: without their permission. If you’re adding random people to your email list and sending those people random emails, you’re spamming. It’s gross.
So the most important thing we can tell you is to get permission before you send mass emails. Have a sign-up form on your website and promote it to the people you want on your list, so that individuals are opting in and are aware that they’re doing so.
That’s how you get a really high-quality email list of people who actually, genuinely care about you and are likely to buy something from you or donate to you. Which is, like, the best!
Avoid Spam of Any Kind:
Unless you’re responsible for putting together a care package from Hawaii, you want to avoid sending spam. Why? Not only are spam emails super annoying, but they can destroy your brand.
Now, that’s not to say spam emails are illegal; they’re actually not. But when you’re doing any kind of email marketing you must follow strict requirements for sending emails to big groups of users, called CAN-SPAM regulations, or face penalties.
These regulations protect people by making sure that:
Individuals can opt-out of receiving your emails if they choose,
Marketers are being honest about the content of their emails and about their own identities, and,
Individuals have a way to contact those marketers directly.
(If you’re in Europe or marketing to people there, there are even more rules for sending emails following the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.)
Mailchimp and other big email marketing platforms help us follow these requirements so that you aren't charged violation fees and so that your email domains aren’t blacklisted or shut down for shady behavior. Basically, just follow the rules they give you.
And if you want to add people that you meet at conferences or events to your organization’s email list, either ask them if you can first, or make it very, very easy for them to opt-out when you send them that first email.
(Personally, we find nothing more annoying than being randomly added to someone’s email marketing list after we’ve talked to them once, and we will absolutely unsubscribe from that list the second we find out we’ve been added to it without our permission, so we don’t recommend doing this. But it happens all the time.)
What You Must Include in Your Emails:
Here are some of the very basic things you must remember to include in your mass emails before you send them to your list. We’re serious about this and so is the government!
One of the most important legal requirements for sending bulk emails (and, again, that’s emails to a large group of users who you may not know) is that the email you send must provide a way that a user can opt-out of receiving future emails from you. Mailchimp templates (and most templates you’ll find on other email marketing platforms) have an unsubscribe link built in, but make sure you don't accidentally remove it.
Another is to include a valid physical email address in your email, associated with your business or organization. It can be a PO Box or a private mailbox, but there needs to be a legit address that is registered with USPS.
Here are the other requirements you must have in your emails; read this carefully, print it out, and check that you’re following all the rules. If you don’t, services like Mailchimp will block your ability to send email, and they are very serious about this… because it’s their whole business.
Have specific questions about this stuff? Let us know! We’re always happy to help.