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FTC Approves New Rule Provision Under The CAN-SPAM Act

The FTC has approved new provisions for the CAN-SPAM act. You can read all about it here and download the actual document here. Below is a repeat of the main thrust of the changes from the FTC site. But first a comment on two items in the text. The first is the notion of who is the Sender when an email contains multiple messages from different brands. To cut a long story short it's the from address that is the Sender . So if brand A,B,C are in the message and it's from Brand A then Brand A is the Sender. The second is what is meant by the term Person. Interestingly, a non profit group tried to change this term so that effectively non profits would not be subject to CAN SPAM. Very pleased to see they failed in that regard.

Here's the FTC excerpt:
(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;

(2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;

(3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”;

(4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

Our new partner web2asia

Shanghai, May 8th 2008. Web2Asia, its parent company MH direkt and Narragansett Technologies have today announced a partnership agreement for the distribution of the professional email marketing solution SpinnakerPro and the online survey tool SensorPro in East Asia.

The East Asian region, particularly China, has shown impressive growth potential for digital marketing. By the first quarter of 2008, 230m Internet users were identified in the Middle Kingdom – more than in any other country of the world. Even though the overall share of online media from most advertisers is still reported to be only 3-4%, current studies predict fast growth in the online ad market of over 50%. Mostly driven by Olympic-related spend, the total online spend in China, including email, is estimated to reach EUR 928m in 2008.

Web2Asia, which is a premium expansion partner for western IT companies in Asia, will localize Narragansett’s products and adapt them to local market needs. Distribution throughout East Asia will be covered by Web2Asias parent company MH direkt, an international direct marketing agency with subsidiaries in Central Europe, India, China and the USA. First campaigns for MH direkt’s customers in East Asia have already proven the efficiency of Narragansett’s tools and their full support for East Asian character sets.

“With a successful combination of eDM and the online survey module SensorPro we could increase the response for our annual customer satisfaction survey by 200% compared to last year. The survey was conducted bilingual in both English and Chinese and we were very pleased with the high quality feedback from our customers and the comprehensive statistical analysis of the results.” says Andy Qian, Senior Marketing Manager Central China, Schenker China – one of the leading international providers of integrated logistics services.

Additionally online campaigns in India and China were carried out to effectively support the FORUM Institute, Germanys largest conference and seminar specialist, in its international expansion. Also the Gildemeister group, a major manufacturer of machine tools trusted in MH direkt to utilize SpinnakerPro for their first eDM campaign in Korea this spring. Web2Asia are offering email sending credits if you use the promotion code “web2asia” on this form http://marketing.web2asia.com/
# # #

About Web2Asia:
Web2Asia (http://www.web2asia.com/) is a full-service provider with headquarters in Shanghai/China that specializes in supporting Western Internet companies and mobile content developers to expand into China, Japan and Korea. The company thereby aims to act not merely as a consultant for entry strategies or a software development outsourcing company but as a complete partner to successfully launch and scale Internet or mobile applications business for its customers. Contact: Mr. Samuel Xiao, samuel.xiao@web2asia.com, +86 21 32270872

About MH direkt:
MH direkt (http://www.mhdirekt.com/) is an international direct marketing agency with headquarters in Austria and subsidiaries in India, China and the USA. The company offers tailor made outsourcing solutions for e-commerce, direct marketing and mail order. Contact: Ms. Susanne Graf, susanne.graf@mhdirekt.com, +43 5574 801 1

About Narragansett:
Narragansett Technologies (http://www.narragansett.ie/) is a leading developer of online marketing software solutions including SpinnakerPro, the leading email marketing solution package and SensorPro, the online research and survey solution, to a global customer base including Coty, KPMG Singapore and Procter & Gamble. Distributed worldwide and under OEM agreement by Epicor Scala, Epsilon Interactive and Exact Target. The solution is a Salesforce.com certified application. Contact http://url.ie/brz

Why Outlook 2007 is good for email marketing.

Much has been written about the Outlook 2007 HTML rendering saga. (OL07 is using the Word rendering engine instead of IE) With most email marketing solutions geared towards IE this has caused more than a few email creatives to get booted out of beauty camp. This backward step, believe it or not, is good for email.

First up, MS have published a very clear list of the HTML elements that no longer work in OL07. Guess what? A lot of these never worked in Lotus Notes either. After Outlook, Notes is the next biggest corporate email client. So by tripping up this segment, the OL07 team have unwittingly caused marketers to re-examine email best practice.

It isn’t readily apparent that HTML design for email is a different animal to HTML design for websites. Dropping website creative into email does happen and OL07 has put a stop to that gallop. It is common enough to assume that website HTML will work across the major email clients. It never did in the first place and what OL07 does is to make that glaringly obvious. With a huge share of the corporate market this cannot be ignored. In short the backward step by OL07 is going to help email creatives get better deliverability rates into the corporate inboxes of Outlook and Notes.

Next up, MS published a free OL07 rendering validator that can be plugged into design tools like Dreamweaver and Expression Web. We examined a number of campaigns and those derived from website creative got the red flags. So it may not be HTML best practice but better looking email in the inbox can only be a good thing.

7 steps to better email:
1 Do use HTML tables with a container table wrapping up header, content and footer
2 Don’t use FLOAT as a means of laying out your email
3 Do use SPAN tags instead of DIV tags
4 Don’t specify CSS styles in the HEAD tag, use inline styles instead
4 Do set the width on wrapper tables to a fixed pixel width instead of a relative percentage
6 Don’t use CSS background image/color use Table background image/color instead
7 Do Run the rendering validator tool against your final HTML

Reference:
Microsoft OL07 Rendering validator tool (free)

Eleven O'Clock is best

According to a press release from JL Halsey, Eleven O'Clock is the sweet spot for your newsletter template. In other words, the top left corner. Traditionally in advertising, the bottom right hand corner of the page (we would say 5 O'Clock) was considered the best for ad placement. I think this is good advice, in particular making sure that some text-based call to action is placed there along with a tell-a-friend link. I would repeat this at the 3oc or 5oc positions also. Though image suppression and preview panes can make even the best newsletter look less than professional, one example stands out from the crowd, the Brown Thomas newsletter. Odd as it may sound, it uses one single image that displays well even with image suppression. Their outstanding metrics bear this up too!

EC Directive 2003/58/EC and UK SI3429

On 1 Jan 2007 the UK passed into the law the EC Directive 2003/58/EC concerning company disclosure requirements. The changes are detailed in SI 3429 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2006/20063429.htm

In general, companies must show their legal business name, registered business address and registered company number on their website. It does not have to be on every page. It should also be on electronic order forms.

It is very clear that the primary change is for a website and electronic documents. It has not been specifically stated that it should be on customer email communications but most people are taking a "one size fits all" approach and putting the disclosure information on the email footer.

If you are a brand covering several countries using one newsletter you may need to use dynamic content to display footers based on data in the contact record. Click here if you need help on how to use dynamic content.

Several sites are making various claims about which action you should take. The recommendation above seems fine and is good CAN-SPAM practice anyway but it is best to take legal advice from a licensed practitioner for the country concerned. For that reason, the only link shown here is the actual legal document signed into law by the UK parliament effective 1 Jan 2007.

Labels: Legal

14 May 2008

FTC Approves New Rule Provision Under The CAN-SPAM Act

08 May 2008

Our new partner web2asia

22 April 2007

Why Outlook 2007 is good for email marketing.

16 January 2007

Eleven O'Clock is best

05 January 2007

EC Directive 2003/58/EC and UK SI3429

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