Email Spam Laws - How to avoid getting reported?
- Ripp Chazire
- Sep 25
- 6 min read
The big “WHAT IF” that we’re all afraid of, the one that paralyzes us in the program. Can I really send an email to this person to ask them to opt in?
Well, yes. Yes, you can.
Getting your emails reported as spam is not good for business and generally degrades your credibility as an individual, even if it's not your monthly newsletter. Getting your database invitation email, sent from your personal email, reported as spam can still have a disastrous effect, so let's learn how to avoid this, starting with the law. Specifically, the United States CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
The CAN-SPAM Act is a consumer protection law for unsolicited and deceptive marketing (Acting & Nguyen, 2024). There are a lot of things this law covers and because its original intent was to stop the distribution of unsolicited porn not everything it covers is relevant to business based email marketing, the newsletters, or database opt in messages we are encouraged to send, but this federal law is the basis for each states laws so it’s important to understand what the key relevant pieces are.
The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for enforcing the CAN-SPAM Act and ensuring that businesses are educated about it and the bounds of what is and is not acceptable, and trust me, you’ll want to follow these because the federal fine can be up to almost 60k per email in violation (Acting & Nguyen, 2023). I don’t have that, and I’m gonna guess most of you don’t either. Oh wait! This doesn’t include your state fines, which will stack and vary between 1k to 25k per email.
OUCH!!
But the most important thing here is understanding who you can send emails to and then what the rules and regulations are and how they can impact you. To send an Opt-In email, there are two things you need to know.
Any email you have that's given you explicit or implied consent can receive an opt-in email.
Explicit consent is easy. These are the people you’ve asked face-to-face or who sign themselves up using your website or form. The reality is, you shouldn’t be sending these people an opt-in email because you’ve already asked them in person and you’ve added them to your database to receive your emails. But if you want to double-check all your boxes, this is a safe group to do that with.
Implied consent means these people have otherwise contacted you or provided their email to you and your company, but haven’t opted in for marketing emails yet.
If you have implied consent or explicit consent, you can send emails like opt-in requests using your CRM or a personal email. However, if you don’t have these, the rules change.
Every other email you collect
Now these could be from social media, a contact list, the business cards in your local coffee shop, etc. You can send these people opt-in emails, but doing so out of your CRM in bulk is not recommended, and some CRMs won’t allow it. Your safest bet here is to write a personalized message to that person to ask them to opt in.
Not only does this increase credibility and customer relations, but it is the 99.99% safe option. You may still get people who send you to spam, but usually, people will delete the email or reply and tell you not to contact them again.
So now that we know this, what can you send?
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