John
Glube
The
FTC Wants To Hear From You
by John Glube, © 2004, all rights reserved of
Head's Up - A Copywriter's Journal
Yep, I kid you not. What about? How to write the rules to
regulate e-mail marketing under the Can Spam Act of 2003.
Why is this important? The deadline for filing comments on the
surrounding issues is April 12, 2003. Comments on what you may
ask.
Some people have suggested this whole Can Spam is no big deal
for permission based e-mail marketers. Fine if you think that
way, but ... here's the rub.
The opt-out rules under the Act and the resulting suppression
requirements are written to regulate people:
* Marketing their own products or services through the use of
opt-out mailing lists;
* Providing mailing services to advertisers who want to market
their products or services to these sorts of lists.
(In previous articles I have pointed out the Act does not
specifically reference unsolicited bulk e-mail. Given how the
provision in the Act is written concerning Internet access
services, which includes ISP's, service providers can
prohibit the use of their services to carry out these sorts of
mailings and the reputable providers have done this.)
But given how the Act is worded, the rules may well end up also
applying to people who run affirmative consent mailing lists.
If people's worst concerns come true, the potential harm to
permission based marketers could be significant.
How could this happen? Well in part because the people who wrote
the legislation did not have a true understanding of how the
micro-business community operates online.
(Remember the Direct Marketing Association, which advocates
opt-out email marketing, sending out unsolicited bulk email or
spam, was leading the charge on the Hill.)
In response, the Act focuses on prohibiting the worst forms of
abuse, providing realistic remedial powers, while sweeping
everyone else into the same bucket in certain key areas.
True, there is a distinction drawn between commercial email sent
with affirmative consent, but this distinction does not carry
over into the suppression list requirements and the need to
provide a mailing address, which it should.
(To say this result is off kilter is an understatement.)
So in part the article is a call to arms. Since the FTC truly
wants to hear from people to ensure it writes the rules
properly, now is the time to make your voice heard.
As the whole article is a bit long for posting in a forum, I
have set it up online over at:
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/csp.html
Also, you can upload a PDF copy of the article to make it easier
for you to print out and read at your pleasure.
Well that's it for today. Here's to your continued success.
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com
-------------------------------------------
If you feel inclined to re-publish this article, you may do so,
providing you republish the article in it's entirety and the
article is not distributed using unsolicited bulk email.
According to the formatter at Busitoolz.com:
Word count: 463 words
Formatted: 65 cpl
by John Glube, © 2004, all rights reserved of
Head's Up - A Copywriter's Journal
Yep, I kid you not. What about? How to write the rules to
regulate e-mail marketing under the Can Spam Act of 2003.
Why is this important? The deadline for filing comments on the
surrounding issues is April 12, 2003. Comments on what you may
ask.
Some people have suggested this whole Can Spam is no big deal
for permission based e-mail marketers. Fine if you think that
way, but ... here's the rub.
The opt-out rules under the Act and the resulting suppression
requirements are written to regulate people:
* Marketing their own products or services through the use of
opt-out mailing lists;
* Providing mailing services to advertisers who want to market
their products or services to these sorts of lists.
(In previous articles I have pointed out the Act does not
specifically reference unsolicited bulk e-mail. Given how the
provision in the Act is written concerning Internet access
services, which includes ISP's, service providers can
prohibit the use of their services to carry out these sorts of
mailings and the reputable providers have done this.)
But given how the Act is worded, the rules may well end up also
applying to people who run affirmative consent mailing lists.
If people's worst concerns come true, the potential harm to
permission based marketers could be significant.
How could this happen? Well in part because the people who wrote
the legislation did not have a true understanding of how the
micro-business community operates online.
(Remember the Direct Marketing Association, which advocates
opt-out email marketing, sending out unsolicited bulk email or
spam, was leading the charge on the Hill.)
In response, the Act focuses on prohibiting the worst forms of
abuse, providing realistic remedial powers, while sweeping
everyone else into the same bucket in certain key areas.
True, there is a distinction drawn between commercial email sent
with affirmative consent, but this distinction does not carry
over into the suppression list requirements and the need to
provide a mailing address, which it should.
(To say this result is off kilter is an understatement.)
So in part the article is a call to arms. Since the FTC truly
wants to hear from people to ensure it writes the rules
properly, now is the time to make your voice heard.
As the whole article is a bit long for posting in a forum, I
have set it up online over at:
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/csp.html
Also, you can upload a PDF copy of the article to make it easier
for you to print out and read at your pleasure.
Well that's it for today. Here's to your continued success.
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com
-------------------------------------------
If you feel inclined to re-publish this article, you may do so,
providing you republish the article in it's entirety and the
article is not distributed using unsolicited bulk email.
According to the formatter at Busitoolz.com:
Word count: 463 words
Formatted: 65 cpl