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How to Prevent Unwarranted SPAM Complaints?

by Jay Rhome
1 replies
In our prospecting efforts, we will send “colds” emails to businesses. I know I will, and will hire someone to do that for me as well. Is there a way to prevent unwarranted spam complains?

Now I know that with the SPAM Act, if our title and content match, we make our advertising obvious and not devious, leave our contact info, and have a “stop emailing me” option, then it’s all good (contrary to many posts I read here from time to time that seem to imply we can’t ever contact a business cold by email).

But it doesn’t prevent people getting that ONE TIME mail from clicking the spam button instead of deleting it. Compound that by a few prospectors using the same domain email to send these, at 100 each a day, and those complaints can get numerous in a hurry.

Direct mail, and B2B phone calls (and referrals!) don’t incur such issues, but emails can be still a good tool to use for prospecting, but I don’t want my host to ban my site for unwarranted spam complaints.

I had thought of using a site with a similar name, or another extension (.net or .bizz) for the email, but unless I use another host, I suppose it can still be a problem.

Anyone with feedback on this?

Thanks
#complaints #prevent #spam #unwarranted
  • Profile picture of the author Jay Rhome
    Here is the main meat of the CAN-SPAM Act



    The law makes no exception for business-to-business email.

    Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:
    1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
    2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
    3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
    4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
    5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
    6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
    7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.
    If the message contains only commercial content, its primary purpose is commercial and it must comply with the requirements of CAM-SPAM. If it contains only transactional or relationship content, its primary purpose is transactional or relationship. In that case, it may not contain false or misleading routing information, but is otherwise exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.



    So, it's clear that we CAN send unsolicited email yet respect all these terms.

    But I know GoDaddy likes to freeze your sites at the slightest complaints and charge $200 to "defreeze" them.

    And I don't know what are the policies for Hostgator and other common hosting companies. Well Hostgator for example are clear about certain limits (like the hourly number of emails sent) but then seem to label "any unsolicited email" as spam while having a link to the CAN-SPAN Act. Totally confusing.

    It kind of suck that a legitimate business prospecting tool can incur unwarranted penalties.

    BTW the info is very hard to get. My google search gave this thread as the #1 spot... and most other results talk about spam complains from subscribers, or how to prevent spam.
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