ANTI-SPAM POLICY
JANUARY 2014
CONTENTS
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 3
What happens if the anti-spam policy is not followed? ............................................................... 3
Legal responsibilities and requirements .......................................................................................... 3
Spam Definition ...................................................................................................................................... 4
Multinational campaigns .................................................................................................................. 4
B2B electronic communications ...................................................................................................... 4
An international definition of spam ................................................................................................. 4
Acceptable Use Policy .......................................................................................................................... 6
Consent ............................................................................................................................................... 6
UK B2B electronic communications................................................................................................. 6
Message content ............................................................................................................................... 6
Basic rules and standards for email marketing with Communicator .......................................... 7
Third-Party Data...................................................................................................................................... 9
B2B or B2C and destination country ................................................................................................ 9
DMA Guidelines for using third-party data ..................................................................................... 9
Glossary ................................................................................................................................................. 12
Further Reading and Useful Links ....................................................................................................... 13
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2
INTRODUCTION
This guide is intended to help users of Communicator avoid sending a digital message that is
unsolicited or is perceived as such by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and message
recipients.
By using Communicator for any form of digital marketing via any available digital channel,
the user agrees to adhere to Communicator’s Anti-Spam Policy.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE ANTI-SPAM POLICY IS NOT
FOLLOWED?
The Communicator Anti-Spam Policy forms part of the Platform Agreement that governs
usage of Communicator. Where there is reason to believe that Communicator’s Anti-Spam
Policy has been breached, Communicator maintains the right to take immediate action.
This could mean putting a campaign on hold or terminating a campaign until it has been
established whether a breach has been made. Communicator maintains the right to remove
access or disable dispatch permissions from a Communicator user where it is evident that a
breach has been made.
LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND REQUIREMENTS
Digital marketing, electronic communications, data collection, storage and usage are
subject to a number of different acts, regulations and codes beyond the scope of this
document. The requirements detailed in this document do not limit, replace or supersede
any legal responsibilities, industry standards, codes of conduct or best practice.
Informational links have been provided for your benefit at the end of this document. For
advice in these matters and to discuss any questions raised by this guide you should consult
your legal adviser.
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3
SPAM DEFINITION
MULTINATIONAL CAMPAIGNS
Almost every digital marketing campaign is a multinational campaign, subject to
international regulations. For example, email recipients based in one country may use
international email providers and filters, may work for companies with offices or servers in
other countries or may travel and pick up email abroad.
Every country has its own national legislation, definitions and best-practices. ISPs and other
industry bodies extend these definitions further and have their own requirements and define
Spam differently, so we need to use a broad definition of Spam.
B2B ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS
In the UK, sending business-to-business (B2B) digital marketing campaigns without prior
consent is not legally defined as Spam, but email recipients who receive unsolicited B2B
electronic messages can still mark emails as Spam and get the sender blacklisted. The legal
privacy standards for B2B digital marketing communications may be lower than B2C
(consumer) communications, but your customers and your recipients have higher
expectations than these minimum legal standards, so B2B senders must not use permissive
legislation as an excuse for bad practice.
Because companies often have offices or servers in more than one country and because it is
common for people to travel and pick up email, with B2B communications we still need to
apply a broad, international definition of Spam.
AN INTERNATIONAL DEFINITION OF SPAM
1.
Spam is the sending of bulk unsolicited digital messages, of a commercial or
non-commercial nature to consumers or businesses
2.
‘Unsolicited’ means ‘without permission or consent’
a. Permission and consent are related to context and expectations: message
type and content must be related to the context of the consent which has
been provided and related to the expectations of the recipient. Consent
may be able to be implied by the actions of the recipient or the context or
the relationship between the sender and recipient.
b. Permission for one type of communication cannot be transferred to another
type of communication unless it is in line with original context and recipient
expectations
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3.
Consent must be provable, intentional, specific and informed
a. Provable means that there should be a record of the source and date of
consent
b. Intentional consent is consent which is freely and explicitly given, not
coerced and fully transparent
c. Specific consent is not general, but must be applied to a specific purpose or
action in line with the recipients expectations and original context
d. Informed means that anything unexpected must be explained to the
recipient so that recipients fully understand that they are consenting and
understand what they are consenting to
In Practice:
When obtaining consent you would normally want the recipient to perform an action, such as entering
an email address (which was not a required field), select an option or tick a box and that the purpose
of the consent or subscription was obvious or clearly explained at the point of signup.
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ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
CONSENT
Make sure you can prove every email address or mobile number has opted-in before
importing into Communicator. Sending digital communications without a form of consent will
result in spam complaints, ISPs will block your emails, mobile operators will block your text
messages and you may have access to Communicator suspended.
Opt-in consent may be achieved or inferred by any of the following means, or similar:

A subscription form on the sender’s website supported by a privacy policy

An offline data collection process where the recipient has clearly given explicit
consent by placing a check mark on a form, or where the form clearly shows that the
email has been collected for digital marketing purposes

A customer who has made a purchase within the last two years (last 12 months for
recipients in the Republic of. Ireland) and the sender is sending messages related to
that original purchase

A business contact where the sender has received contact details, directly or via a
trade show, event or forum, where email or mobile contact was clearly stated or
expected
UK B2B ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS
Within the UK, prior consent is not explicitly required for B2B campaigns and it is permissible to
fulfil these campaigns on an opt-out basis. This legislative permission should be used with
caution and with reference to the recommendations stated in the paragraph regarding B2B
communications within the Spam Definition section of this document.
If using third party B2B data, please refer to the Third Party Data section of this document for
guidance on how to achieve the necessary standards for performing opt-out B2B marketing.
MESSAGE CONTENT
You may not send messages which are offensive or promote anything illegal.
Message content must be related to the context of the consent which has been provided
and related to the expectations of the recipient.
Some content will generate spam complaints or delivery problems. In order that
Communicator can maintain the highest delivery rates possible for all of our customers, the
following types of content or messages are prohibited:
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
Pornographic, sexually explicit, dating services, adult services or adult novelty items

Pharmaceutical products, herbal or vitamin supplements

Make money online or from home opportunities

Short term loan, pay day loans, credit repair, get out of debt, stock market or day
trading tips

Lead generation or list rental services
BASIC RULES AND STANDARDS FOR EMAIL MARKETING
WITH COMMUNICATOR
Communicator is a very powerful email delivery and digital marketing platform. To help
make sure you do not have delivery issues or lose your sending reputation, all users of
Communicator are expected to be reasonable and do the following

Provide a working unsubscribe mechanism which removes recipients from the mailing
list within 48 hours

Identify the sender and provide recipients with a simple means of contacting the
sender

Understand your data and campaigns. Understand who receives messages and why.
Make sure the same people do not receive too many emails

Monitor inboxes and act on recipient requests. Monitor opens, clicks, bounces and
unsubscribes and take early action when negative results are evident to avoid longterm problems

Before sending large volumes to a new list or data which has not been used for a
while, test a couple of small batches first

If recipients are not opening, clicking or responding to your emails you should reduce
volumes to those recipients and test methods of re-engaging with them. Eventually
you should remove long-term inactive email addresses from your list

Get in touch with us if you need help, support, advice or ideas
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In Practice:
Go through your own sales process. Sign up to your own mailing list. Look at the wording and
consider what expectations you are setting. What messages would you expect and when?
Try and unsubscribe. Is it easy, or would you simply mark the email as spam?
Remember that customers forget, people change email addresses and their minds.
Your recipients won't open everything you send them, but try and catch them early on if they are
becoming disinterested. And if they really are not interested, let them go and focus your attention
and energies on your most valuable and engaged customers
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THIRD-PARTY DATA
The rules for using third-party data are the same as those explained in the Acceptable Use
Policy:

Make sure you can prove every email address or mobile number has provided
consent before importing into Communicator

Message content must be related to the context of the consent which has been
provided and related to the expectations of the recipient

Provide a simple unsubscribe process
The above may be difficult to adhere to when using third-party data.
Here are our guidelines for sending messages to third party data using Communicator.
B2B OR B2C AND DESTINATION COUNTRY

UK B2B third party data can be used if you inform Communicator before importing
any data and follow the DMA guidelines which are explained in the following
sections

UK B2C third party data can normally not be used because you have not obtained
direct consent. You may obtain a person’s consent through a third party, but a lot will
depend on the clarity and transparency of the information that the third party gave
the intended recipient when they collected their contact details

Non-UK B2B third party data must not be used without specific information about
permission requirements for the destination country and prior permission from
Communicator

Non-UK B2C third-party data must not be used without specific information about
permission requirements for the destination country and prior permission from
Communicator
DMA GUIDELINES FOR USING THIRD-PARTY DATA
Before using third party data you must seek direct and specific assurances from the data
vendor about the basis on which the information was collected. Additionally, you must
inform Communicator Corp before importing any data and follow the DMA guidelines which
are explained in the following sections.
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1 - INFORMATION ABOUT THE DATA
Before accepting third-party data from a vendor and before importing into Communicator
the sender should ask the data vendor to provide the following information:

How the list was compiled. This should provide information about how and where the
data was obtained (trade events, telephone calls, other third-party lists, public
information, websites, etc.) and whether the people on the list were made aware of
their inclusion on the list. This information should be specific

The context of the list or opt-in. This should provide information about the type of
messages that the recipients would expect and want to receive

When the list was created. This should provide an indication of the oldest, most
recent and average age of the data

How and when the list was verified. This should explain the verification process and
give an indication of the expected bounce rate

The data protection information and privacy policies which were present at the point
of data collection. URLs should be provided for these

How to process unsubscribe request. It must be possible for an individual or an
organisation to request removal, not just from the purchased list, but from the
underlying source list
2 - DATA REQUIREMENTS
To personalise footer information in the messages the data vendor must supply as part of the
list the following information. This information also provides a quality assurance check and will
be used should there be any delivery problems.

opt-in or data-collection source name and URL

opt-in or data-collection date

unsubscribe URL (if personalised to individual)

last activity or verification date
3 - EMAIL CONTENT REQUIREMENTS
Within messages to be used with third-party data, the sender should include information
telling recipients why they have received the message, who the data vendor is, where and
when their data was collected, and information about how to stop receiving these emails
and how to be removed from the underlying source list.
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This can be as simple as having appropriate information and links in the message footer, but
may be difficult to achieve if the link between the recipient, the origin of the opt-in and the
data vendor is tenuous or if the data vendor operates under a range of company names.
As it is difficult to understand how this could be achieved in text messages we advise against
using third-party data via this channel.
In addition to the Acceptable Use Policy, messages sent from Communicator should contain
at least the following:

The sender’s true identity as well as the identity of the data owner or data vendor,
including a valid means of contacting the data owner. Recipients should be able to
easily respond to emails

A clear reference to an easy to use and functional process to cancel the subscription
or consent, which immediately and permanently removes the receiver from the
source mailing list owned, managed or brokered by the data vendor
In Practice:
Third-party campaigns can be very effective, but it is rarely the easiest option.
Be wary of vendors who are happy to just give you their data without knowing anything about you or
how you are going to use that data. Who else is using that same data?
Be realistic in your expectations, ask your data vendor searching questions and if in doubt, ask your
Account Manager for help or advice.
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GLOSSARY
TERM
DEFINITION
Data subject
A living individual who is the subject of personal data.
Data owner
An organisation responsible for the collection, storage and maintenance of
email address and personal data.
Data user
An organisation that uses data – either its own data or data from other
sources – for any direct-marketing purpose.
Data
controller
A person or organisation that, either alone or jointly, decides how and why
any personal data is to be processed. List brokers/managers come under this
definition.
Data
processor
A person who collects, stores, or deals with personal data on behalf of a
data owner or data controller.
Personal data
Information from which a living individual can be identified – either on its
own or combined with other information – which is in the possession of, or is
likely to come into the possession of, the data controller.
Third party
advertisers
A person or organisation that uses rented data for direct marketing.
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FURTHER READING AND USEFUL LINKS
Companies Act 2006 - Electronic communications requirements
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/13/chapter/3/crossheading/electroniccommunications
ICO guidance on the Data Protection Act 1998 and the PECR 2003:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations.aspx
Data Protection Act:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents
Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations 2003:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2426/contents/made
Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) 2000 regulations:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2000/2334/contents/made
Guide to Businesses on Distance Selling
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/general/oft698.pdf;jsessionid=3210E04468
3723F07ABEAA13BE20F010
Office of Fair Trading Guide – Distance Selling Explained:
http://oft.gov.uk/business-advice/treating-customersfairly/dshome/dsrexplained/?searchterm=Distance+Selling+explained
Committee of Advertising Practice Code:
http://www.cap.org.uk/The-Codes/CAP-Code.aspx
DMA advice on cookies and their usage:
http://www.dma.org.uk/toolkit/countdown-cookie-compliance
ICO guide to the collection and use of personal data online:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/topic_guides/~/media/document
s/library/Data_Protection/Detailed_specialist_guides/personal_information_online_cop.ashx
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Digital marketing, electronic communications, data collection, storage and usage are
subject to a number of different acts, regulations and codes beyond the scope of this
document. The requirements detailed in this document do not limit, replace or supersede
any legal responsibilities, industry standards, codes of conduct or best practice. For advice in
these matters and to discuss any questions raised by this guide you should consult your legal
adviser.
t: +44 (0) 844 870 8971
e: [email protected]
w: www.communicatorcorp.com
14