6 Email Compliance Rules Cinema Marketers Need To Know
In the second installment of our Email Marketing Strategy Series, Showtime’s Cinema Marketing Expert Amin Karam shares the 6 things you need to know in order to be compliant before embarking on an email marketing campaign.
In today’s world, it’s incredibly quick and easy to get started with email marketing and the wide variety of tools available to marketers make it simple for users of all levels to create a campaign, upload a list, and send it out.
However, there are a few nuances in the law that even marketers with the best intentions can accidentally violate, so it’s important to be informed on how to be compliant in order to take advantage of the wonderful medium of email marketing.
“Email is 40 x more effective than Facebook or Twitter combined”
What Do I Need To Do To Comply?
Keeping up with international anti-spam laws and regulations can be hard as practices that are legally acceptable in one country could be prohibited in another and in some cases, may even result in hefty fines.
While this may sound intimidating, if you’re a legitimate business using an email marketing tool to send appropriate email campaigns, the likelihood is you already complying with the rules. However when in doubt, it is always best to err on the side of caution. The following is a simple list of things marketers like you can do to ensure your campaigns are compliant with the law no matter where you are in the world.
1. Ensure you have consent to email the people on your list
Most country’s email marketing laws stipulate that people need to give you consent to include them in marketing campaigns.
If you don’t have consent to email a person, then you shouldn’t include them on your list. Express consent is granted when someone specifically gives you permission to send them email campaigns by opting-in when entering their email address, for example in a subscribe form on your website or entering their details into your in-store newsletter subscribe form.
2. Don’t use misleading header information
“Header information” refers to the extra information sent along with your email campaign, such as the “from” name, subject line, and reply-to address.
Email marketing laws stipulate that you must not include incorrect or misleading information in these fields to try to trick people into opening your email campaigns.
Arousing curiosity or getting creative with your subject line is perfectly acceptable, as long as you don’t deliberately try to deceive recipients.
3. Identify your email as an advertisement
CAN-SPAM laws require you to clearly and conspicuously disclose that your message is an advertisement.
The law gives a lot of leeway in how you do this, and you don’t need to specifically state “This email is an advertisement” every time you send a campaign, however you do need to ensure you are not purposely deceiving your recipients into thinking this is a personal email.
4. Include your address
Most country’s email marketing laws state that you must clearly include a valid postal address for your business in your email campaigns. This can be your current street address, a postbox address, or an address with a registered commercial mail-receiving company.
Most companies comply with this law in all of their campaigns by including the address of their headquarters/corporate offices at the bottom of every campaign.
If you’re an Engage customer, including your physical address in your email campaigns is easy. Simply go to your “Circuit Admin” and under “Contact & Footer Details” fill all the fields. Once you’re done it will automatically appear on every campaign you send.
5. Include a way to opt-out of receiving future emails from you
Most countries’ email marketing laws stipulate that your email campaigns include a clear and conspicuous mechanism for opting out of receiving emails from you in the future, and that this mechanism is easy for an ordinary person to recognise and understand.
Make sure you comply in all of your campaigns by including an unsubscribe link in the footer of every email that instantly removes a subscriber from the list, before directing them to a confirmation page that lets the recipient know they have been unsubscribed.
6. Honour opt-out requests promptly
CAN-SPAM laws state that you must honour a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days, and that you cannot charge a fee to opt them out, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website to opt out.
Make sure you check out Amin’s other post in our Email Marketing Strategy Series ‘How The iOS15 Update Will Change Email Marketing’
We can help! If you need advice on email marketing compliance get in touch with our Marketing Experts here.