Having just celebrated the three year anniversary of The CAN-SPAM Act, it seemed like an appropriate time for a little refresher course!

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which stands for The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, became effective on January 1, 2004. As quoted from the Federal Trade Commission Fact Sheet for Businesses, the provisions laid out in the Act apply to those emails “whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service, including content on a Web site.”

Below are the four main requirements set forth in the Act:

1. An email may not contain false or misleading header information. This means the email’s “From Address” and routing information must be accurate and must identify from where the email originated.

2. Subject lines must not be deceptive, and must not mislead the recipient about the contents of the email.

3. Emails must contain an easy way for the recipient to opt-out of receiving future emails from the sender. Please note, this opt-out mechanism must be present on both HTML and Text versions of your emails. This can be easily accomplished by using the following snippets in Publicaster:

HTML Version: To unsubscribe from future emails from XYZ, [~Optout~]click here[~EndOptout~]

Text Version: To unsubscribe from future emails from XYZ, go to: [~Optout~]

4. Commercial emails must be clearly identified as an advertisement or solicitation. In addition, the sender’s physical mailing address must be included on all emails. Again, this must be on both HTML and Text versions.

To read more about The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, go to the FTC’s Fact Sheet for Businesses.

Celebrate the Act’s third anniversary by checking over your emails to ensure they are CAN-SPAM compliant!