E-Mail Newsletters and SPAM

What is Spam?

Spam or Unsolicited Bulk E-Mail is simply any e-mail that is sent to a large number of people without first obtaining their consent. Typically SPAM is used to advertise dubious goods (porn sites, loan sharks, spam software, get-rich-quick schemes), although if inadequate care is taken collecting addresses, a product newsletter for owners of that product also meets the criterion, as would a charity soliciting for donations.

Why is Spam a problem?

Unlike the postal mail system, Internet subscribers usually pay to receive e-mail (which is similar to faxes), although admittedly they typically don't pay much per e-mail - the point is, the recipient pays, while the sender pays next to nothing.

This upsets many people. Their response can range from a complaint e-mail to the sender's ISP, through to submitting the sender's site or ISP to one of the global blacklists, which has the effect of terminating their internet access. Large dialup ISP's also often maintain their own blacklists - these are very hard to remove a site from.

ISPs usually have an Acceptable Use Policy that states that sending Unsolicited Bulk E-Mail from one of their accounts is grounds for termination of their contract with a customer, often without notice.

How can I avoid my mailing list or newsletter being called Spam?

Maintain an audit trail - you should have supporting documentation for every address on your mailing list stating their desire to be on your list:

If you allow subscription requests via e-mail, you should keep all correspondence.
For subscription requests received via the telephone, you should keep notes of who you spoke to and the date and time.
For web requests, you should keep logs of the client's IP address.

Note in particular, that obtaining e-mail address from business cards collected at a trade show (for example) is particularly problematic. In cases like this, you must use a three-way handshake, as mentioned below.

Require a three-way handshake system for potential subscribers - however you receive their subscription request, you should send a message to their e-mail address that states something along the lines of:

We have received a request from you to be added to our mailing list - please reply to this e-mail to acknowledge your desire to be on the list. If this request was in error, please ignore this mail and accept our apologies - no further e-mail will be sent.

Don't be tempted to reverse the scheme - asking if they don't want to be on the list will not work as many people will not reply to mail of this sort as spammers use it as a technique to verify their e-mail address database.

Respond to removal requests promptly - no matter how carefully you run your list, accidents happen (people change their address, forget they subscribed, give the wrong address, etc). You must also monitor bounce messages, and remove addresses that are failing from your list promptly.

Discard old address lists - if you haven't used an address list for more than 3 months, you will find that quite a few people have forgotten they asked to be on your list, or have changed their e-mail address (the average lifespan for an e-mail address is around 6 months, and popular account names will be reused rapidly). At the very least, you will need to perform the three-way handshake again.

All this may sound particularly onerous, however the alternative is much worse. If care isn't taken at the point when you add individual addresses to your list, you devalue your entire list. You also risk having your Internet servers blacklisted, and ultimately, your ISP may suspend your access.