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Of course, compliance with SPAM regulations is important from a legal perspective. It is also important, however, from a marketing standpoint. Email deliverability and compliance are tightly tied to the quality of your database. The quality of your database is tied to marketing’s efforts to build and sustain a community of active subscribers engaged through the targeted, relevant, and unique content you must regularly provide.
So often we see Sales’ and Marketing’s desire to cast a wide net, regardless of implications. Many companies avoid taking critical marketing measures (i.e. double opt-in processes, database maintenance) in the vain hope that the quantity of email addresses living in their CRM will somehow, someday equate to quality (i.e. leads, pipeline, revenue). In reality the result is wasted darts, meaningless aggregate data, and increased SPAM risk.
Regardless of SPAM laws, we shouldn’t want to email those who are not interested in what we have to say or offer. We have talked about this before, but it bears mentioning again, your demand generation efforts rely on the steps you take towards engagement (and SPAM compliance). While it is tempting to automatically opt-in any new email address that crosses your desk, DON’T! Here’s why:
Varying SPAM Laws: While the U.S. has less stringent laws which would allow you to automatically opt-in without issue (as long as an opt-out mechanism is always included), many other countries follow stricter laws including Canada, Australia, China, and New Zealand. In the next year or so, EU countries will join the latter group as well. In those countries, to be SPAM compliant, from a legal perspective, the recipient must provide clear consent via explicit opt-in before you can send commercial advertisements.
Ever-Changing Laws: In general, the trajectory of SPAM laws will trend toward stricter laws and enforcement. The most immediate example (as noted above) are EU countries, whose SPAM laws will tighten within the next two years. If you take a more lenient posture now, you have to be especially vigilant as to which countries have instituted stricter SPAM laws, what those laws require, and respond immediately in kind.
Possible “Work-Around”: While not recommended, it is feasible to deploy programs based on geography to auto opt-ins in more relaxed countries like the U.S., but then require explicit opt-ins for deployments to stricter countries like Canada, Australia, China, and New Zealand. This would, however, demand a lot of time and resources.
Community Engagement: While I completely understand the temptation to automatically opt-in targets within your community, I caution that it will provide a false sense of who makes up your universe. Forcing recipients of your communications to manually opt-in gives you with a real sense of engagement, interest, and intent.
Automating that process muddies the waters in terms of validity and viability of your subscribers, especially when it comes to demand generation efforts. I would argue that it is far better to have a smaller universe of those who are truly engaged than a large universe that includes an unknown quality of apathetic readers. For this reason alone, I don’t think that the benefits outweigh the risks of SPAM violations.
The Bottom Line: Abide by the strictest requirements and apply that standard across the board to protect your company from SPAM violations, uphold the reputation of your brand, and ensure true community engagement. Our email marketing best practices support global strategies for large non-profit organizations focused on member acquisition to technologies companies who sell their solutions business-to-business.