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Spam? Not Spam? Commercial? Not Commercial? Question re Sending Unsolicited E-mails

by HB2010
2 replies
I need to advertise an essay contest that is open to high school students. Last year we had a pathetically low number of entries. The point of the contest is to boost brand awareness, but no purchase is necessary, entry is free, and the prize has a total cash and product (not our product, it's things high schoolers actually want) value of $2,000.

My question is, how can I legally and ethically disseminate information about the contest? Obviously snail mail is an option, but seems unnecessarily expensive and environmentally wasteful. I would ideally like to e-mail the info and school emails are easily accessible on most school websites. But, the question is, can I use them for this purpose? Is it considered "commercial" under CAN-SPAM? Some schools specifically state on their website that the state has a law against using the e-mail for non-school purposes. Is informing them of a free essay contest "non-school"? The e-mail we've designed contains absolutely no advertising, with the exception of a link to our website in the signature line. It only contains info on the essay contest and a link to the page where they can get the official rules, submit online, etc.

TLDR: Can I legally and ethically get e-mail addresses from school websites in order to send school officials info regarding a free, no purchase necessary, essay contest?
#commercial #emails #question #sending #spam #unsolicited
  • Profile picture of the author rritz
    If you fill in contact forms or send off emails one by one to school officials, if your content is no sales pitch or promotion for any brand or product, then it might not be spam-compliant, but it will also not get you into trouble.

    I am doing cold emailing to comapnies, introducing our service from time to time. This legally is spam. However, I do not use an autoresponder, but send messages from my inbox, no more that maybe 100 or 200 at a time

    if out of 200 I get one complaint about my email being spam it is a high number

    On the other hand, if you started scraping emails off the schools' webpages, fed them into an autoresponder and blasted out several thousand emails you'd be looking for trouble.
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  • Profile picture of the author ProducerK
    Being Can Spam compliant is pretty easy to do, there are a few small steps you need to follow:

    *Do not have misleading headers/subject lines
    *Do not use misleading content
    *Have a one click opt out process. Process opt outs within 10 days.
    *Use single opt in, preferably double opt in data.

    If you follow these simple rules and common sense, it will be easy for you to generate more users for your contest.
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