Business Brief 01 / 03
CAN-SPAM for B2B Marketers:
the Opt-In Misunderstanding
For a law that took effect over seven years ago (January 1, 2004), there is still a surprising amount of confusion
around what CAN-SPAM mandates and what it does not.
A quick review - what is CAN-SPAM?
In 2003, Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act, a federal law that defines and regulates the sending of unsolicited
commercial email. This law became effective on January 1, 2004.
In enacting the law, Congress determined: (1) there is a substantial governmental interest in regulating
commercial electronic mail on a nationwide basis; (2) senders of commercial electronic mail should not mislead
recipients as to the source or content of such e-mail; and (3) recipients of commercial electronic mail have a right
to decline to receive additional commercial electronic mail from the same source.
The Act does not ban the sending of unsolicited email for business purposes. Instead, it establishes requirements
for those who send such e-mail, spells out penalties for those who violate the Act, and gives consumers the right
to ask emailers to stop sending email to them.
What does this mean to B2B Marketers?
It means that the law of the land is opt-out, not opt-in!
The most frequent misconception among B2B marketers is that CAN-SPAM requires that email recipients give
permission (opt IN) before they may be sent unsolicited commercial email.
This is simply not the case - CAN-SPAM does not prohibit the sending of unsolicited email for commercial
purposes - what it does require is that companies stop sending email to recipients who have said they no longer
wish to receive it (opt OUT).
Copyright © 2011 True InfluenceTM. All rights reserved.
Business Brief 02 / 03
A 2008 article in B2B Online sums it up nicely:
“There is no risk associated with the inclusion on a distribution list of ‘people who haven’t given
their express permission to be contacted.’ Assuming that an email is not fraudulent or misleading, it
may be sent lawfully to anyone in the country who has not opted out from future commercial emails
from the sender. In addition to requiring that email recipients be allowed to stop receiving email
from a company, CAN-SPAM has a range of provisions designed to make it clearer who is sending a
given email and what the email is about.”
For the typical B2B marketer, none of these provisions present any sort of difficulty, and that’s appropriate - the
intent of CAN-SPAM was not to eradicate the sorts of email we send. The purpose was to increase consumer
protection by clamping down on the scams, phishing, and fly-by-night offers that are far more prevalent in the
B2C world.
An 8-Point Compliance Checklist
• Don’t use false or misleading header information - your FROM, REPLY-TO, and domain information
must be legitimate and actually identify the real sender of the message (sections 4(a), 5(a)(1), and 6).
• Don’t use misleading subject lines - this is self-explanatory, and rarely an issue for B2B marketers
(section 5(a)(1) and 5(a)(2)).
• Tell recipients where you are located - all emails must contain 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 (section 5(a)(3) and 5(a)(5)(A)(iii)).
• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you - include a “clear and
conspicuous” unsubscribe mechanism in every email (section 5(a)(5)(A)(ii)).
• Identify the message as an advertisement/solicitation - the law does not state how or where this
identification must be made, and thus provides a lot of leeway. This rarely a problem for B2B marketers, as
our messages to prospects would be difficult to confuse with anything other than a commercial message.
(section 5(a)(5)(A)(i)).
Copyright © 2011 True InfluenceTM. All rights reserved.
Business Brief 03 / 03
• Process opt-out requests promptly and honor them - opt-out requests must be processed within 10
business days and must be maintained permanently. Senders can’t charge a fee to process an opt-out, can’t,
require the recipient to give 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 (section 5(a)(4)).
• Don’t sell or share email addresses of people who have unsubscribed - emails from recipients
who have opted out may not be provided to any other entity seeking to send that party email (section 5(a)(4)).
• Offer recipients a way to receive some types of email from you while blocking others, along
with a “global unsubscribe” option to stop all future email from your organization. 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. (section 5(a)(3)(B))
It’s as simple as that.
Again, the key takeaway for B2B marketers is that we are not sending the types of email that CAN-SPAM was
created to prevent, and (as written in the Harvard Business Review article linked below) we should not feel
constrained in our ability to send unsolicited email to prospects so long as we observe CAN-SPAM regulations.
Resources
Direct link to the CAN-SPAM regulations:
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
B2Bs - Your eMail Policy Could Be Hurting You - Harvard Business Review:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/b2bs_your_email_policy_could_b.html
Remember CAN-SPAM is Opt-Out, not Opt-In - BtoB Online:
http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080811/FREE/765691262/1124/BTOBCOLUMNS
Opt-Out Mistakes to Avoid (accidentally not complying):
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1716566/opting-out-gracefully
Copyright © 2011 True InfluenceTM. All rights reserved.