Anti-Spam Policy

Anti-Spam Policy

We take spam and permission very seriously. By engaging our email marketing services you are also agreeing to abide by this anti-spam policy

Australia’s anti-spam legislation was introduced in 2003 in response to concerns about the impact of spam on the effectiveness of electronic communication and the costs imposed on end-users.

The Spam Act 2003 prohibits the sending of any email to someone without the permission of the recipient on the topic of that email.

Here are some specific scenarios so it’s clear what does and doesn’t constitute permission:

What kind of email addresses are OK to send to?

To send an email to anyone , you must have clearly obtained their permission. This could be done through:

  • A subscribe form on your website.
  • An opt-in checkbox on a form. This checkbox must not be checked by default, the person completing the form must willingly select the checkbox to indicate they want to hear from you.
  • If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can only contact them if it was explained to them that they would be contacted by email AND they checked a box indicating they would like to be contacted.
  • Generally it’s ok to contact customers via email if you have done business with them in the last 2 years but don’t just add them to your email list without first contacting them and asking them specifically if they want to receive it.
  • If someone gives you their business card and you have explained to them that you will be in touch by email, you can contact them. If they dropped their business card in a fishbowl at a trade show, there must be a sign indicating they will be contacted by email.

Basically, you can only ever email anyone who has clearly given you permission to email them specifically about the subject you’re contacting them about.

What kind of email addresses ARE NOT OK to send to?

Anything outside the examples above doesn’t equal permission in our eyes, but here are some examples to make sure we’re crystal clear. By engaging our email marketing services, you agree not to supply email address data which:

  • You do not have explicit, provable permission to contact in relation to the topic of the email you’re sending.
  • You bought, loaned, rented or in any way acquired from a third party, no matter what they claim about quality or permission. You need to obtain permission yourself.
  • You haven’t contacted via email in the last 2 years. Permission doesn’t age well and these people have either changed email addresses or won’t remember giving their permission in the first place.
  • You scraped or copy and pasted from the web. Just because people publish their email address doesn’t mean they want to hear from you.

Some of these people might have given you their email address, but what’s missing is your permission to email them commercial messages. Blasting promotional emails to any of these people won’t be effective and will more than likely see your email marked as spam by many of your recipients.

What content MUST I include in my email?

Every email we send on your behalf must include the following:

  1. A single-click unsubscribe link that instantly removes the subscriber from your list. Once they unsubscribe, you can never email them again.
  2. Your name and physical address.

How we’ll know if you don’t have permission

Please be aware that we have numerous layers of approval and monitoring to ensure you comply with our anti-spam policy. Here’s a few of them:

  1. Our software is directly integrated into the spam reporting systemsfor some of the biggest ISP’s. If you don’t have permission and someone marks your campaign as spam, we’ll know about it the moment that button is pressed. If you receive a complaint rate greater than 0.25% of all recipients (that’s 25 complaints for every 10,000 recipients) your account will be terminated. This is a generous figure that takes into account false spam reports.
  2. We monitor blacklists and our abuse accounts all day every day. We can pinpoint who is causing us delivery problems or attracting complaints very easily.

If we do discover that you’re emailing people without their permission, we will terminate our services immediately.

In the end, it’s really common sense. Take off your marketing hat and put yourself in your recipient’s shoes. If they don’t recognise who you are or aren’t interested in what you’re sending, they’ll think you’re a spammer. It’s that simple.