Is your business primarily an online business? Do you use the Internet in order to sell and to do online marketing? Have you ever sent an email to someone that you didn’t know personally, to future potential customers? Have you ever sent an email to many people you didn’t know personally? Then… you could go to jail!
We don’t mean to scare you, especially since our business is made up of online marketing and sales! However, today we do want to talk about an important topic: making sure your online sales strategies don’t get you in any trouble. Otherwise, not only might you end up angering many of your customers (or potential customers), but you could end up in jail!
gdpr email marketing tips
Do you know what the CAN SPAM Act is?
Spam has been highly regulated in the United States for many years, since 2003 in fact. That’s when they passed the CAN SPAM Act, which clearly laid out the groundwork for legal actions and illegal actions (spam). If you break these laws, you could be fined up to … $16,000! Unless you are selling a very expensive product, it’s not going to be worthwhile for you to be caught spamming anyone.
In this post, you will find some tips on how to make sure you stay legal, while continuing to sell, of course.
1. Don’t lie!
For some reason, people don’t like it when you lie to them, especially the government. Therefore, in all your communications, you have to be honest. That includes who you are, and who you are sending the email to: the “from” and “to” fields. It’s not fair to say you are sending an email from Barack Obama, for example, when really it is FindThatLead.
You also can’t lie about the content of the message. If your subject line is deceptive, that would be considered illegal. For example, if you write in the subject line “Happy Birthday!” and it is not an email congratulating this person on their birthday, you could get in trouble.
That´s not to say you can’t get creative with your subject lines, in fact we greatly encourage it! Just make sure it is not blatantly false, or else you could end up with a hefty fine.
2. Include your address
In all email communications, it’s necessary by law to include your physical mailing address. Legally, it doesn’t matter where you put it, but we suggest to add it to the bottom of the email. If you don’t have an amazing office yet, you can include a post office box. Besides, this helps to give credibility for your company, and show that you are real!
3. Opt-out- gdpr email compliance
If there´s only one thing you take away from this blog post, make sure you learn this one! If you have a mass emailing campaign, it’s absolutely essential to include an opt-out option at the bottom of the email. You must include this unsubscribe option, otherwise you really could end up in some legal trouble.
What should a gdpr say in an opt in email form
According to this unsubscribe option, you have to actually implement the changes in 10 business days. It’s much easier to have an automatic system, but whether you do it manually or automatically, make sure you do it within 10 days!
Conclusions – how to make gdpr consent email
If you follow these basic tips, you will be able to avoid jail time for simply doing your job. However, make sure to check the laws in all the countries your business operates in. Europe has a different set of laws from the United States, and so on.
Not only do these actions help you to stay out of trouble, it’s also good marketing practices. By being a “good” marketer; you will create a brand people can trust, you will have a higher email open rate (as the people that don’t want to receive your emails will unsubscribe), and you just might get more business!
Download our FindThatLead plugin and find out how we can help you to be the best marketer or salesman out there!
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